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! UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.^ 



A SUMMER PARISH: 



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AND 



axniuQ S>txbxtt af "BxR^tx, 



AT THE " TWIN MOUNTAIN HOUSE," WHITE MOUNTAINS, NEW HAJMPSHIRE,^ 
DURING THE SUMMER OF 1 8 74, 

By Henry Ward Beecher 

Phonographically REPoirrED by T. J. Ellinwood. 




9 







1 



NEW YORK: 

J. B, FORD AND COMPANY, 

187s. 



^^ CONGRESS! 
iS^ASHlNOTOKJ 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, 

BY J. B. FORD AND COMPANY, 

in the OflBce of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, 



PUBLISHEK'S NOTICE. 



Foe many years, Mr. Beecher has been accustomed to 
preach more or less in the neighborhoods which chanced to 
be his summer resting-places. During the past four summers 
he has taken refuge in the White Mountains from the annual 
hay-fever which relentlessly pursued him everywhere else ; 
and, finding a congenial home at the *^Twin Mountain 
House," he has been in the habit of preaching to the large 
family of guests in the parlors each Sunday morning. 

For two summers, also, at the request of the guests, he 
has led the daily service of morning prayer, at the same time 
reading and familiarly commenting upon the Bible lesson. 

Finding so wide and grateful an appreciation of Mr. El- 
linwood's reports of Mr. Beecher's sermons, prayers, and 
lecture-room talks — a feeling which seems to grow broader 
and deeper with each succeeding year, and which very many 
letters from subscribers to the Plymouth Ptdpit and the 
Christian Union have shown to be especially notable during 
the present year, — the publishers thought it well last season 
to secure reports of these informal discourses and family 
services, in what Mr. Beecher pleasantly calls his ''summer 
parish." Hundreds of people, from every part of the land, 
and probably three of every other denomination to one of 
his own, were the friends who gathered every morning for 
the daily service of prayer, and every Sunday for the sermon. 

This little book is put forth in the confident hope that it 
will be welcome to thousands of Mr. Beecher's friends every- 
where, who will find interest in these, his lighter labors, 
during the period of gaining his summer rest. 

J. B. FOKD & Co. 
New York, May, 1875. 



CONTENTS. 



•ermotts. 



PAGE 

I. What is Religion ? . . . . . . 7 

liESSON : Gal. V. 1-13. *Hymns : Nos. 888, 705, DoxolORy. 

II. Christian Sympathy 39 

LESSON : Rom. xii. HYMNS : Nos. 102, 632, 

III. Luminous Hours 55 

Lesson : Luke ix. 28-42. Htmns : Nos. 119, 564, Dozology. 

IV. Law and Liberty 81 

Lesson : Luke ix., 28-42. Htmns : Nos. 31, 1166, Doxology. 

V. "As A Little Child." 103 

Htmns: Nos. 776, 733. Doxology. 



)tx\jim 0f ^0rahu f raj^r. 



I. Paul's Idea op Love ....... 137 

Lesson : 1 Cor. xiii. Hymn : No. 770. 

II. The Value of Mankind .147 

Lesson : Mark ii. Hymn : No. 823. 

III. The Chastisements of Love 155 

Lesson : Hob. xii. 1-13. Hymn : No. 733. 

IV. Neighborliness . , 167 

Lesson : Luke x. 25-37. Hymn : No. 424. 

* Plymouth Collection. 
V 



vi CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

V. Heaven 175 

Lesson : Heb. xii. 18-20. *Ht]VEN- : No. 545. 

VI. Pictures of Truth 181 

Lesson : Rev. v. Htmn : No. 346. 

VII. Scripture Lesson ; without comment . . .193 

Lesson : Phil, ii. 1-16. Htmn : No. 704. 

S^III. Christian Living 197 

Lesson : Rom. xii. Hymn : " Shining Shore " . 

IX. One with Christ 307 

Lesson : John xv. 5-13. Htmns : Nos. 837, 424. 

X. Spiritual Conceit 313 

Lesson : Luke xv. 1-32. Hymn : No. 840. 

XI. Christ, the Physician 331 

Lesson : Luke xix. Hymn : No. 898. 

XII. MAN-LOVINa, THE ROAD TO GOD-LOVING . . v 327 

Lesson: John xiii. 1-17. Hymn : No. 776. 

* Plymouth Collection. 



txmms. 



I. 

What is Religion? 



WHAT IS RELIGION! 



I shall take for a starting point, in the remarks that I 
make this morning, the 19th verse of the 2d chapter of the 
2d Epistle to Timothy : 

" ^Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this 
seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his." 

The context is this : 

*' Who concerning the truth have erred, saying that the resurrec- 
tion is past already; and overthrow the faith of some. Nevertheless 
the foundation of God standeth sure." 

We have come in our day into times precisely like those 
of the apostle, in which there is a great movement through- 
out the whole civilized world, and a great change of feeling, 
an apprehension or what is worse, in regard to the stability 
of the Christian religion. 

There are two classes that look upon this matter from 
very different standpoints. On the one side are those who 
are devout philosophers in religion, and who hear doctrines 
which seem to them to be very strange expositions of Chris- 
tianity — doctrines which they have not been accustomed to. 
They see the manners and customs of religious institutions 
or churches very much disturbed ; and they have an impres- 
sion that evil is coming in like a flood, that the foundations 
are being removed, that the old landmarks are being taken 
out of the way, that everything is going to wreck and ruin, 
and that rank infidelity, atheism and anarchy are going to 
overflow the world. 

Then, on the other extreme, there are those who feel that 
religion is not worth anything at all if it stands on founda- 
tions of the past ; but that it is like an old stubble-field, that 

Preached at the Twin Mountain House, White Mountains, N. H., Sunday morn- 
ing, August 23d, 1874. Lesson : Gal. v., 1-13. Hymns (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 888. 
705, Doxology. g 



6 WHAT IS RELIGION? 

it was valuable one or two thousand years ago, that some 
wheat was reaped from it then, but that what was good in 
it has been gathered out, and that we are coming, by prog- 
ress, to a new era. Some think it is to be an era of spirit- 
ualism, in which there are to be glimpses of light and knowl- 
edge from other spheres ; and yet, what foundation it is to 
stand upon they do not know, though they think it will stand 
on something. 

In sympathy with these, or in antagonism to them, as the 
case may be, there is a host of men who believe that science 
is breaking the seal, and that the things of God, hidden from 
the foundations of the world, are now being made known 
through the ministrations of science ; and they say, " Away 
with your superstitions and dogmas and doctrines ! They 
may once have been helpful ; but the time has come for the 
shining of truth through science." 

So, in these different ways — some out of fear for the 
integrity of religious things, and some with the hope that 
there is to be a far more blessed day of knowledge than ever 
before, and almost all, I think, with an amiable, kind, humane 
feeling — this great outlying, skirting host are of opinion that 
religion is pretty much done up, and that we are now to look 
for something better. 

To all such I say. The foundations of God stand yet, firm 
and sure ; and I declare that the essential elements of Chris- 
tianity were never so apparent as to-day; that they were 
never so influential ; that they were never so likely to pro- 
duce institutions of power ; that they never had such a hold 
on human reason and human conscience ; and that the re- 
ligious impulse of the human race was never so deep, and 
never so strong in its current. 

In the first place, then, we must recollect that there may 
be very great changes around about religion, in its external 
forms, without any essential interior change, nay, even with 
the augmentation of its interior power. I will admit that 
there has been a great change of the forms in which facts have 
been woven into doctrines. In other words, the great outlying 
facts of human consciousness — the nature of man ; the char- 
acter of intelligence and of volition ; the truths of responsi- 



WHAT IS RELIGIONf 7 

bility and moral government ; what they are ; how they are 
to be brought together into a perfect system ; the existence 
of God and of a divine providence — all these things have 
been held in various ways, and have been philosophically 
stated in differtnt forms ; and that there has been, and is yet 
to be, a great change in the mode of stating these things, I 
do not deny ; but I hold that their statement is one which 
grows better and better from age to age. Some men think 
that anything which is a revelation from God must be always 
one and the same thing ; but God's revelation is alphabetic ; 
it is a revelation of letters, and they can be combined and re- 
combined in ten thousand different words, varying endlessly. 
The great facts which are fundamental to consciousness, once 
being given, are alphabetic ; and these facts may be com- 
bined ; and with the development of the human race in 
intelligence and moral excellence they go on taking new 
forms ; and larger experiences must have a larger expres- 
sion. The trouble with a statement in an early age is, that 
while it is true to the sum of the knowledge of that age, each 
age develops an individuality of its own, knowledge making 
it larger ; and a statement must be made which is as large as 
the actual experience of the human soul has been. 

Take agriculture. In the earliest period of the settlement 
of a neighborhood, men clear a piece containing a few acres of 
ground, and put such a fence around it as they can afford, 
and plow among the stumps, and leave them standing ; but as 
time goes on the stumps disappear, and in twenty or thirty 
years, when they are gone, a man, coming back, and missing 
them, says, " Why, where are those precious stumps that 1 
remember used to be in this field ? The boys have easy times 
plowing now-a-days ; but when I was a boy it meant some- 
thing to plow among those stumps and their roots. This is 
not what I call farming. You are all going to effeminacy." 
It is not such farming as he was used to ; but it is better than 
the farming that belonged to primitive times, which may 
have had its pleasant memories and associations, but which 
was not farming in its highest form. Has not agriculture 
grown ? Has it lost ground because the fences and the plows 
are better than they were at the beginning, and because one 



8 WHAT IS RELIGION? 

man can now do as much as ten men then could ? Has agri- 
culture gone under because its instruments are changed, and 
because its forms are different ? Is not the change it has un- 
dergone a sign of advancement and improvement ? 

So, in the knowledges of the world, and in its various in- 
stitutions, there have been changes, and there are to be 
changes ; but they are progressive. On the whole, they are 
not ominous of evil, but are full of fructifications of hope. 

The changes of religious institutions trouble people ; and 
if I supposed that the church was an exactly ordered institu- 
tion, I should be troubled about its changes; but according 
to my understanding it is not such an institution. 

When an architect has drawn the plan of a house, or a 
public building, his lines are laid down just so, his measure- 
ments are precise, and he specifies whether it shall be of wood 
or brick or stone ; and the contract is made according to 
the specifications, and the builder has to follow them. 

Now, there are many who think that the church was sent 
to us in that way, that there are just such lines and meas- 
urements laid down respecting it, and that we are bound to 
follow those lines and measurements. They think that exact 
ordinances are prescribed, and that we are under obligation 
to observe them. 

If I believed this, I should look upon the innovations oi 
modern times as dangerous ; but I do not beheve the church 
was ordained to be in a particular shape any more than I be- 
lieve that schools were. I do not believe that the New Testa- 
ment prescribes that our ordinances and methods of worship 
shall take on any given form. I do not believe that the rules 
and regulations of the church were made precise and specific 
any more than those of town meetings, or the constitutions 
of the several States, or the Constitution of the United States 
were. Government is ordained in the nature of man, and it 
begins to operate, and men find out among themselves, by 
their experience, that their government is to be formed and 
administered largely according to the climate and physical 
characteristics of the country where they are, the degree of 
civilization which they have attained, and the exigencies of 
national life as they arise. 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 9 

The same is true of religious institutious. I believe that 
God ordained the church. That is to say, when he made 
men he made them social beings, so that no man can live 
without wanting to touch his fellow men somewhere. It is 
the necessities of men's social natures that have led them to 
come together in churches. 

When patriotism swells in the hearts of men, and sets 
them on fire, no man wants to be alone in the field, and he 
seeks his neighbor, who joins him ; and the villagers unite 
together ; and the more intense men's feelings are, the more 
they run to each other. For we are not born to be separate 
drops, but drops united together to form streams, with chan- 
nels deep and wide, and with impetuous currents. When God 
made men with social natures, he ordained that they should 
come together by their loves, by their tastes, by their enthusi- 
asms ; and that ordination is the foundation on which the 
church stands. It is decreed that you shall come together 
with your aspiration, with your devotion, with your affection, 
with your hope. 

So God created the church ; but whether it should be Pres- 
byterian, or Methodist, or Baptist, or Congregational, or Epis- 
copalian, or Eoman Catholic — God has never troubled himself 
about that, though his zealous disciples have. The form of 
the instrument of religion is not a part of his decrees. He no 
more ordained that divine worship should be carried on in 
certain fixed ways than he ordained that men who live by 
agriculture should harrow or furrow their fields. Agriculture 
does not stand on the machines which it employs, but on the 
necessity of men to eat. When God made men hungry he 
foreordained agriculture. And in the matter of the church, 
it does not stand on its ordinances. 

But do not think that I am speaking contemptuously of 
these things. What I desire to be understood as saying is, 
that men have no business to worship an ordinance. I say 
that men have no right to make an idol of the church, or of 
Sunday, or of the Bible, or of anything that is in itself an 
instrument. Eeligion is something other than the instrument 
by which it is produced. 

Do I say my prayers to the school-house ? No. And yet, 



10 WHAT IS RELIGION f 

I believe in intelligence ; and the school is simply an instru- 
ment by which we develop that intelligence. Do I say my 
prayers to the arithmetic, the geography, and the grammar ? 
No. I think they are useful ; but I would kick them every 
one out of the house if you were to tell me that I must 
say my prayers to them. They are my servants, my helps, 
but not my masters. 

And so, when men open the doors of the sanctuary on 
Sunday, the church is not my master : I am its master, for I 
am a son of God. It is simply the chariot which he has sent 
to carry me on my journey. 

When a minister stands to teach me, is he my master? 
No. If he can help me, well and good. Like other men, he 
is to be estimated according to what he can do. "What he is, 
that am I. I am a sinner before God, living on God's mercy 
and goodness, and that is he. No ordination, no long line 
of influences, though ten thousand times ten thousand years 
should rest on his head, would make a man anything but a 
man. And when he ceases to be a man, he dies, and is gone. 
All men that live have the same passions and appetites ; hu- 
man nature is the same everywhere ; and ministers have their 
pride, their vanity, their weaknesses and their temptable- 
nesses ; they are all just common men ; and God never put 
one of them over his feUows, or made him superior to them. 
Still less did God ever say to an ordinance, " Go down and 
stand in the midst of men, and make them bow to you." 
Therefore, not to the refluent waves, nor to the sprinkling 
drops, nor to any instrument, will I bow down, and say, 
"Ye are my master." God is my master; and to these 
things I say, "Ye are my servants;" and I look down on 
them aU. 

Now, when I see that there is change in the institutions 
of religion, in the currents of government, and in the ordi- 
nances of the church, I do not stand quivering, and saying, 
"Men have departed from the counsels of God, and religion 
is going to destruction, and we do not know where it will 
end." I say that religion lies, not in outside things, but in 
the states of men's minds. It is the way that they think and 
feel and act that determines what their religion is. Keligion 



WHAT IS RELIGION f 11 

is human experience. It is the soul's action God-ward and 
man- ward. And if religion is going out of the world, it is 
not because the old church is unshingled, nor because the 
familiar bell has stopped swinging in the beKry, nor because 
men are indifferent to forms, nor because they do not care 
for the Book, nor because the ministry is not revered as it 
used to be. These things may be fortunate or unfortunate, 
according to circumstances ; but religion will not have died 
out of the world until it has died out of the human soul. 
Religion is the experience of human souls in their relations 
to God. Sympathy toward God and men — that is religion ; 
and whether that is decreasing or increasing in power through- 
out the world will not be judged by these external signs ar 
measurements, but by other and yery different ones. 

It is said that men do not belieye in virtue. Well, when 
a man tells me that the refinements of the school-men are 
lapsing on questions which relate to eternal regeneration 
through the Son of God, and that many of the fine distinc- 
tions between ability -natural and ability-spiritual are going 
out of men's thoughts and out of much use, I admit it ; but 
I say that the great fundamental truths of religion — namely, 
the nature of man, the wants of man, and divine love as a 
sufficient supply for human wants — instead of growing weaker 
are growing stronger in men's minds. 

There has been a great deal of teaching in regard to the 
depravity of man. I think I could preach to you a doctrine 
of total depravity, after the old fashioned sort, which would 
make every one of you red in the face, and angry, so that you 
would say, '* I do not believe a word of it ;" and I think I 
could preach to you what men tried to preach in the olden 
time on that subject so that you would not one of you 
deny it. 

For example, every man is born at zero. He is nothing 
at first. We are told that men are born without original 
righteousness ; but this is not half of it ; they ai-e bom without 
original anything, except a little sack of pulpy matter. The 
supreme function at birth is suction. Men are born without 
a name and without a trade. They are bom without power 
to walk, without power to handle anything, without power to 



12 WHAT IS RELIGION? 

see, and without power to hear. Their senses are not born 
until they have been in the world months and months. It is 
a mere seed that is born. When, therefore, I am told that 
men are born without original righteousness, I do not find 
any diflQculty in believing that ; for they are bom without 
anything. They do not feel nor think. Tbey are a bundle 
of capacities susceptible of development by-and-by. There is 
not one element in that wonderful, obscure, undeveloped 
thing called a iabi/, which is not unfolded by the law of 
gradualism, little by little, step by step. We do not learn to 
see except by experience in seeing. The eye is all right ; but 
it is to be trained for its function. We cannot stretch out 
the hand, or bring it back, or do anything with it until we 
have learned to use it. 

There is a jubilee in the family when the child first walks. 
The father comes home at night, and the mother says, '^ Oh, 
baby has walked ! baby has walked ! " Yes, it has walked ; 
but it had to practice a great while before it could get up, 
and stand on its feet, and take one step after another without 
falling. Walking has to be learned ; and when the child has 
learned to walk, what infinite slappings there are to teach it 
to not walk where it ought not to ! How we strive to teach 
the child to talk ! and then how we rebuke him because 
he talks too much, or at the wrong times ! How much time 
is spent in teaching him how to reach out his hand ! and 
then how his hand gets whipped when he reaches it out and 
puts it into the sweet-meats ! Everything is taught, and 
everything comes by practice, in these matters. 

When, therefore, it is said that men are born in a deplor- 
able state of wickedness, and that there is no original right- 
eousness, you accept it as much as the old divines used to. 
You state it differently, but you recognize it. It is inherent 
in human nature. Nobody can deny it as it is stated and 
explained now, and nobody is disposed to. 

But that is not all ; it is not possible for man, beginning 
at nothing, to unfold and grow up to something, without 
making many mistakes. The child does not walk perfectly at 
the outset ; it is not possible that he should ; and you do not 
set it down against him. The child is not able to use his 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 13 

hand at once ; but nobody sets tbat down against him. It 
is a part of God's original design in the world that men 
shall be born at the seminal point, and grow up gradually to- 
ward perfection ; and that being the original design, imper- 
fection is a part of it. 

As no man can use his eye except he has been drilled to 
do it, and as no man can use his hand except he has been 
drilled to do that, so no man can use his reason without 
having been taught to use it. "When the child goes to 
school, and undertakes to learn to write, the master, if he fails 
to make a round and beautiful 0, does not say to him, *' That 
is total depravity. You ought to write right." We wait for 
a child that is learning to write, and give him a chance to be- 
come proficient by practice. Early imperfections are not nec- 
essarily blameworthy. They are largely inherent, and necessary 
to the conditions in which men are placed in this world by the 
creative fiat of God himself. When a child begins to learn a 
trade we expect him to spoil tools. When a young man 
commences to do carpenter's work we do not find fault with 
him because he does not shove the plane just so, or use the 
saw in the best manner, or make his joints exactly right. 
We wait for him to learn these things. The process of 
learning a trade is called apprenticeship). We have an ap- 
prenticeship for the hand, an apprenticeship for the foot, an 
apprenticeship for the eye, and an apprenticeship for the ear. 
When a man learns arithmetic and grammar he goes through 
an apprenticeship of the reason. And do not you think that 
there is an apprenticeship for the affections and the moral 
sentiments ? There is ; and it is harder to develop the 
higher powers in the soul than it is to develop the lower ; 
it takes longer; and it is attended with more imperfec- 
tions ; and these imperfections are a part of God's foreseeing 
wisdom. 

Just here comes in the distinction between infirmities or 
faults, and transgressions or sins. The Scriptures recognize 
a difference in them. Wrong things done on purpose are 
sins ; and those things which fall out from inexperience, from 
not knowing, from weakness or from imperfection, are faults. 
Imperfections inhere in the whole divine conception of the 



14 WHAT IS RELIGION? 

human race on the globe ; and men are filled with infirmities, 
of necessity ; and these infirmities break out into transgres- 
sions more or less complicated all the way down. 

Now, I have been stating facts ; but suppose that I should 
say to you, " The doctrine of the Bible is that men are sin- 
ful ; and so sinful that they all need to be born again"? T do 
teach that doctrine, in its totality. Everybody is imperfect. 
Everybody sins with every part of his mind. Kobody ever 
becomes manly and strong except by an overruling influence 
that inspires him, and lifts him up from the lower plane to 
the higher. 

And so, after all the pother that is made about the doc- 
trines of human depravity, and the need of regeneration by 
the power of the Holy Ghost, are they not true ? Men kick 
them about like so many foot-balls ; but do they not recog- 
nize them as true when they are stated in a different way from 
that in which they have been accustomed to hear them stated, 
and in a way which is suited to the experience of our times ? 
To us the old doctrines may seem to be dying, but the old 
human nature is just the same everywhere. Men are empty, 
and do not know how to do right things till they have learn- 
ed ; and they learn painfully, and under circumstances in 
which they want divine inspiration ; for no man rises from a 
low plane to the higher one of heroism and enthusiasm with- 
out the aid of a higher mind than his own. 

Men think these truths are passing out of the world ; but 
I say they are simply taking another form of exposition. 
The truths themselves are inherent, universal, indestructible. 

I think that if there be any one thing that has been mis- 
interpreted, it is the doctrine of the divine influence upon 
the human soul. As I recollect my own belief when I was a 
child — and I was an orthodox child — I believed that when a 
man who was bom a sinner, and who had grown up in sin, 
came to a certain age, and went through a proper fermenta- 
tion, and had dejected the lees, as it were, and left the wine 
of life pretty clear above, he was converted. I believed that 
he then passed from the north side of the hedge, where it was 
shady, to the south side, where the sun always shone. I be- 
lieved that God shone on his elect, that they had the divine 



WHAT IS RELIGION f 15 

influence, and that no others had. But my impression now 
is, that there is not a single human soul that is not the pro- 
duct of the divine Spirit, and that that Spirit is the vivific 
element of the universe; and that as the sun in spring knocks 
at the tomb of every sleeping plant, and there is a resurrec- 
tion wherever there is a bud or germ, and there is not a daisy 
or harebell, or ranunculus, or flower of any kind that does 
not start at the solicitation of the sun's light and warmth, so 
the roots of power being here in human souls, there must be 
a shining of the divine Soul directly upon them to bring out 
in them intelligence, emotions, and moral sentiments. This 
down-shining influence of God is universal. 

What, does the Spirit of God help men before conversion? 
Oh, yes; all men, always and everywhere — the savage and the 
semi-civilized as well as the civilized. All men, whatever 
may be their nature, are under the divine guidance of provi- 
dence, and of the stimulating influence of the divine Spirit. 
All may not profit by it as much as we do, but it is as much 
for them as for us. All do not profit by the sun alike, but 
the sun shines as much for one as for another. Some are lazy 
and some are industrious ; and it depends upon each one how 
far he shall derive benefit from the life-giving power of the 
sun. How much profit shall be enjoyed by each one is deter- 
mined, not by the sun, but by the man who receives its light 
and heat. The sun means gold to one man, and mud to an- 
other. It means active energy to one man, and sitting in the 
comer of laziness to another. The sun is not to blame if men 
do not take its bounty. 

And so inspiration comes to all men. Those who receive 
what they can take in of it are thus prepared to receive more, 
and to be made better and better by it. And I think that 
this doctrine of divine inspiration and down-shining, in- 
stead of being less believed than ever before, is more be- 
lieved. It is taking on some extravagant forms and modes 
of expression; its philosophy is not always the wisest and 
best ; but I think there is a prevalent growing feeling that 
God is nearer to the human race now than he was in the past; 
that he is the universal Father of mankind ; that those lim- 
itations and distinctions which exist among men are a part of 



16 WHAT IS BELIGIONf 

Grod's original design; and that more men are coming to him, 
and coming in more ways, than ever before. 

Do not think that you are the only men that pray. 
Drunkards pray. There is not a man here who has put 
up such anguishful petitions to God as some men have 
who are very bad in the sight of the world. Do you sup- 
pose that men who are bad go down without prickings of 
conscience, and without many yearnings' for the interpo- 
sition of God's power? I tell you, the struggles of men 
who are going down to death are often a thousand times 
more admirable in the sight of God than the easy efforts 
of men naturally bom to virtue. It was the one that was 
lost that God thought of more than of the ninety and nine 
just persons who needed no repentance ; and I think the 
prevalent feeling is that God never was nearer to men, and 
never more helpful toward them, and never dearer to them 
than to-day. The first truth is the Fatherhood of God ; the 
next is the brotherhood of man ; and I think they were 
never before so prevalent and vital as they are to-day. 

But look at it in another way. Take the elements of 
religion ; it is not one thing alone. It means the moving 
of the human soul rightly toward God, toward man, and 
toward duty. He who is using his whole seK according to 
laws of God is religious. Some men think that devotion is 
religion. Yes, devotion is religion ; but it is not all of relig- 
ion. Here is a tune written in six parts; and men are 
wrangling and quarreling, about it. One says that the har- 
mony is in the bass, another that it is in the soprano, an- 
other that it is in the tenor, and another that it is in the 
alto ; but I say that it is in all the six parts. Each may, in 
and of itself, be better than nothing; but it requires the 
whole six parts to make what was meant by the musical 
composer. Some men say that love is religion. Well, love 
is, certainly, the highest element of it; but it is not that 
alone. Justice is religion ; fidelity is religion ; hope is relig- 
ion ; faith is religion ; obedience is religion. These are all 
part and parcel of religion. Religion is as much as the total 
of manhood ; and it takes in every element of it. All the 
elements of manhood, in their right place and action, are 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 17 

constituent parts of religion; but no one of them alone is 
religion. It takes the whole manhood, imbued and inspired 
of God, moving right both heavenward and earthward, to 
constitute religion. 

Many men think that a man who shudders and trembles 
with a sense of the presence of the Most High, who is so 
devout that he lays his hand on his mouth and his mouth in 
the dust, and cries, '^ Unclean, unclean ; God be merciful to 
me a sinner," is a very religious man ; but that depends 
upon circumstances. I have known men who went into a 
mood in which they were profoundly struck through with 
veneration when under religious influences, but who could not 
resist temptation in business, and would cheat, and would 
get the best of a bargain, and justify themselves by their love 
of others. They said, ^'I love my neighbor as myself," — 
that was for Sunday ; and they also said, *' Every man for 
himself," — that was for Monday, and the other week days. 

But you find men who, in conference meetings and church 
meetings, or when the bell sounds, or when the organ peals, 
have reverent feelings, and in whom, under such circum- 
stances, worldly feelings do subside. They go to church, 
and when they come to the church door they take off their 
hat, and march to their seat, looking neither to the right 
nor to the left, and bow themselves down, and go through 
the whole religious service, and rise, and go out, and feel that 
they have been religious ; and they see boys pouring out of 
the church on the other side of the street, talking and laugh- 
ing, and they shudder to think what an irreligious and god- 
less generation of children is growing up. They have beeu 
doing their religion ; and it is ink-color ; it is dark and som- 
ber. But do I revile it ? Do I say it is incongruous and 
inconsistent with Christian hope ? In its place it is as much 
right as either 'part in a piece of music is right. The sub- 
bass is all right in an organ ; but I should not want a man to 
play on a thirty-two foot pipe all the time and teil me that 
that was music. 

There are other men who think that religion is a proper 
view of the whole scheme of Gospel truth. They lift their 
spectacles up from their sharp, gray eyes, and begin at the 



18 whjlT is religion? 

beginning, and lay down position after position, and squint 
along the line ; and if it lacks a thousandth part of an inch, 
they think there is heresy. Orthodoxy to them is right belief 
at every post and corner. This is intellectual religion. But 
do I ridicule it ? No, not in its place and position. There 
is no man that is a man who does not think; and if he 
thinks he must connect his thoughts together; and if he 
thinks about religion, his thoughts must form a system ; and 
provided he is not conceited, and does not think that he is 
the man, and that wisdom shall die with him, he has a right 
to .his system ; and the Arminian thinks his way, the 
Calvinist his, and the Arian his. They have their schemes 
of the universe ; but the trouble is that they are almost all 
pocket-Bchemes. Men's way of thinking is not God's way of 
thinking. '^ As the heavens are higher than the earth, so 
are my thoughts higher than your thoughts, saith the Lord." 
The diflQculty with our systems of religion is that they are 
not big enough to comprehend all the knowledge and experi- 
ence of the world. They are provincial, limited, narrow ; 
and if you make them dogmatical and despotic they are cruel. 
Dogma is indispensable to religion, but it must be in its place. 

There comes another man. He is not a reasoning nor a 
venerating man. He is one who believes in emotion. He 
likes a joyful hallelujah which well nigh takes the roof off. 
Occasions where there is singing, and shouting, and seizing 
by the hand, and laughing, and being happy, and making 
glad in religion — those suit him. ^' Ah ! that is glory, that 
is glory ; " he says. But do I revile that ? No. I like to see 
it, provided a man does not say that that is the only thing 
in the universe. I say that in due measure it is to be re- 
spected instead of ridiculed. 

Another man comes along and says, ^^ Oh, the beauty of 
creation ! Oh, the loveliness of virtue ! How sweet are 
these sentiments ! " Do I revile men of taste ? Oh no, I do 
not revile them except when they attempt to despotize over 
me, and say to me, ^' My style of thinking is to be your 
style, or else you are a publican and sinner." Taste, in its 
time and proportion, is one element of religion. Religion is 
the whole of all these things. 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 19 

Then comes a practical man, and he says, *' You talk 
about your metaphysics and emotions and sentiments ; but 
what I believe in is good square matter-of-fact common-sense 
ideas. Show me something to do, and I will do it. That is 
what I call being a Christian." "Well, to my thinking, he is a 
dead man who has no thoughts and feelings and sentiments. 
You can grind out, with Babbage's calculating machine, re- 
sults about as good as these pragmatical men produce. 
Matter-of-fact things are good ; but they are infinitely better 
where they are accompanied by taste and reason and yenera- 
tion and beneficence than where they are without these ac- 
companiments ; for the whole is better than any single 
element. And all of these elements may be abundantly found. 

Look at the ethical feeling — ^that is, the sense of duty and 
fidelity and right. See how strong it is, the world over. 
Take the element of humanity. Was there ever a time when 
the whole world's heart throbbed as it does to-day in response 
to calls for help that come from the needy ? Let Chicago be 
burned, and, before the last peal of the alarm bells has 
sounded, from London thousands and hundreds of thousands 
of dollars are coming in. Let there be famine in India, and 
American Christians instantly send ships thither laden with 
supplies. Let disease sweep I^ew Orleans, and every village 
or hamlet in New England takes steps for its relief. And do 
you tell me that humanity is growing less ? It never was so 
broad and high and deep as it is to-day. 

Take the element of domestic virtue. There never was 
a time when the household lived on so high a plane. There 
never was a time when "father" seemed so venerable, or 
when " mother " was such a charm to bring the thought of 
heaven to the soul. There never was a time when so many 
men were homesick for home. There never was a time when 
so many looked back upon the family in which they were 
brought up as a Garden of Eden from which they have been 
expelled by age and duty. The household was never before 
so much a power as it is now. It is subject to assaults, 
open or covert, but it will dash all these things from it. 
As the human body has in it a resiliency, or repellant power, 
by which it throws off morbific influences and attacks, so 



20 WHAT IS RELIGION f 

the household has a power of virtue which never was so 
radiant and so irresistible as it is to-day. When the foun- 
dations of the family are adamantine, and when there is 
a crystal dome extending over it through which men see 
God and heaven, tell me not that religion is in danger. The 
family is God's primal church ; and to-day it is the nearest 
like the divine and heavenly state of all things that we have. 

Public spirit, which is a form of beneficence, was never 
stronger than it is to-day. It is growing more and more uni- 
versal. And I judge of the preaching of a place by the pub- 
lic spirit which I see exhibited there. If I go through a 
village and see that the town pump is in a dilapidated con- 
dition, and the fences are tumbling down, and the town 
house is a rattlety-bang affair, taken possession of more by 
winds and rains than by men, and that the churches are 
poor, and the almshouse is a miserable place, and the 
roads are stony, and that there are no bridges but rails 
with a few clods thrown on them, — I say, *' There is poor 
doctrine preached in this village." For any true preach- 
ing of religion will make men public spirited. No man can 
be preached to as he ought to be in regard to his duty 
to God and men without his religion having a reflex influ- 
ence on his house, his barn, the public highways, every- 
thing that belongs to him in common with his fellow men. 
" Ye are brethren " is a part of the Gospel. Keligion is not' 
love to God alone: it is love to man as well. Among other 
things, it means public spirit — and by that test I think there 
is not a good gospel preached in some parts of New Hamp- 
shire ! 

Democracy in its true sense belongs to religion. Eeligion 
extends its walls about everything in creation. It looks upon 
all men, whether they be ignorant or educated, high or low, 
good or bad, as one household. It has that spirit which 
leads a man to extend warm quickening sympathies to his 
fellow men in proportion as they need them. Eeligion, where 
it exists in its highest form among men, draws them to those 
who are bad quicker than to those who are good, that they 
may give them help and succor. 

This spirit is spreading everywhere ; and I do not despair 



WHAT IS RELIGION t 21 

of seeing the time when in even heathen nations the true 
spirit of reflected Christianity shall have its influence, and 
when men can go around and around the globe and find in 
every tribe and section — in the wilderness and everywhere — 
the common feeling that man is a child of God, and goes 
back to God, and is immortal. 

That is not all. I ask you to consider what religion is 
according to the definition of Paul : 

*' The fruit of the Spirit is love, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, 
goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." 

A man, going down to Boston, hears of Cushing's place. 
Everybody, I suppose, who has been to Boston, has heard of 
that place. There are magnificent flowers, and all sorts of 
fruits there. The fruits are the world's wonder for variety 
and lusciousness and perfectness. This man drives out to 
Cushing's, and goes around the place. When he gets there, 
the first thing he looks at is the fence ; and he says, " Well, 
this place is not what it is cracked up to be — look at that 
fence ! I have a better fence than that about my lot at 
home." He goes into the grounds and looks at the lawns, 
shaven and shorn, and he says, '^Fd give more for my old 
medder with timothy hay in it than this docked, shaved 
lawn." He looks at the house, and says, ''I thought it would 
be a fine castle, but it is only a house." He goes into the 
orchard and looks at the fruit-trees, and says, '* There is a 
great deal of bad bark on those trees." But he came to see 
the fruit ; and what has the fence, or the lawn, or the house, 
or the bark on the trees to do with that ? The way to judge 
of the value of the orchard, or garden, or grapery, or hot- 
house is to try the fruit. The test of the fruit is the fruit 
itself. If the apples, and the pears, and the plums, and the 
peaches, and the grapes, and the figs, and what not, are good, 
that is enough. If they are large and ripe and luscious, what 
more can he ask ? I do not care whether a man whitewashes 
or blackwashes his fence, or whether he uses guano or barn- 
yard manure, or what his mode of cultivation may be, the 
question is. Does he get good fruit ? If he does, his method 
is good. 

Now, I take it that the apostle is speaking of religion 



22 WHAT IS RELIGION? 

when lie speaks of the fruit of the Spirit ; and the fruit of 
the Spirit is what ? Orthodoxy ? Oh, no. Conscience ? 
Not a bit of it. One of the fruits of the Spirit is love ; and 
is love dead ? Does it no longer rock the cradle ? Does it 
no longer sit patiently through the day and night by the bed 
of pain and sickness ? Does it weep no longer for the out- 
cast wanderer ? Is there no sacrifice that love makes ? 

Another fruit of the Spirit is joy ; and is joy gone ? Is 
there no merriment among children ? Are there no longer 
hours of conscious fidelity and heroism ? Are there no acts, are 
there no developments, which imply the exercise of the noblest 
parts in men ? Are they shaking down no fragrant dews in 
the soul ? Is joy like a worn-out instrument whose strings 
are broken and whose body is smashed ? Is joy voiceless and 
tuneless ? Was the world ever before so full of joy as 
to-day ? 

Peace, the strangest of fruits — is it not slowly coming to 
be that which is the unison of all other qualities with bless- 
edness in the soul ? I do not mean that peace which is leth- 
argic and sacrifices nothing, but that peace which comes from 
the excitement of all parts of our nature, carrying them 
above the ordinary line of experience. It is high up that the 
most perfect peace is. There are places in the nooks and 
ravines of the mountains where there is peace ; but they who 
go up in balloons say that as they rise above the earth aU 
sounds die away, and that high up in the pure ether there is 
perfect silence. And so, as men rise through the experience 
and trials of life, they find that high up there is a realm of 
peace. Is peace dying ? 

Some tell me they do not believe in religion because 
of the way that men act in Wall street ; because they see 
elders, and deacons, and ministers even, doing wrong things. 
Of course they do wrong. They would not be in the human 
body if they did not. But go and see what mothers bear for 
sons. Go and see, in miniature, that same atoning sacrifice 
which Christ fulfilled, in those who literally give their life, 
living it, giving it, for the unworthy, the poor and the needy. 
Do you tell me that religion is dying out ? It blossoms every- 
where. Every household is full of it. Every village is filled 



WHAT IS RELIGION t 23 

with it. Orthodoxy, the exact statement of things, may be 
shattered; church order may be changed; but never wiJl 
religion die out until the human soul is void of love, joy, 
peace, long-suffering, goodness, faith, meekness, and temper- 
ance. 

Ye, then, who mourn because particular modes are chang- 
ing, and think that religion is dying out, look deeper, and 
pluck up hope out of your despair, and confidence out of 
your fear. And to you that think religion is going away 
because of science, let me say that science is the handmaid 
of religion ; it is the John Baptist, oftentimes, that clears the 
way for true religion. By religion I do not mean outward 
things, but inward states. I mean perfected manhood. I 
mean the quickening of the soul by the beatific influence of 
the divine Spirit in truth, and love, and sympathy, and con- 
fidence, and trust. That is not dying out. Not until the 
soul of man is quenched can religion die out. Not until God 
ceases to be Grod can religion be quenched in this world. It 
may have its nights and days ; it may have its winter and 
summer ; it may be subject to the great laws of oscillation 
and change; but, nevertheless, the word of God standeth 
sure ; its foundations are immutable ; and not until the last 
generation has been bom and translated, not until the last 
tear has been shed, not until the last pulse of love has 
throbbed, not until the new heavens and the new earth 
appear, will religion die on the earth or lose its power among 
men. 



24 WHAT IS RELIGION? 



PEAYEK BEFOEE THE SERMON. 

We rejoice, our Father, that our thoughts are lifted, not by our 
wills alone, but by the inspiration of Grod ; for we cannot discern the 
things that are spiritual and afar off save by divine help. Thou that 
broodest the world, and dost spread abroad thy wings and it is night, 
and let thy face shine and it is day — thou everywhere the beloved 
and the loving, we rejoice in thy succor and inspiration and help; 
and we implore thee, this morning, not because thou needest im- 
ploration, but because it is sweet for us to ask, and to behold that the 
blessings which we ask are given graciously. We draw near to thee 
as our children to us, that draw near with their helplessness and with 
their wants. We desire to draw near to thee with their confiding 
faith, and their love unaffected. We call thee our Father. Thou 
hast made thyself known to us as such. We do not discern in thee 
dreadful power, nor do we discern in thee the scowl of oppression 
and of cruelty. Our thought of thee is of all truth, of all justice 
and equity, of all gentleness and sympathy, of all love and helpful- 
ness. What our father and our mother were to us, that art thou ten 
thousand times ten thousand fold. We grope as in the dark. We 
are like tapers here. Thou art the sun rolling in the immensity of 
thy being, and giving light and warmth to every one. We are afraid, 
O Lord our God, often, to trust in thee, fearing to exhaust thy mercy, 
which is ineffable, universal and inexhaustible. Thou dost pity us, 
knowing our frame, and remembering that we are dust. Thou dost 
succor the ill-deserving, causing thy sun to rise upon the good and the 
bad, sending rain upon the just and upon the unjust, and filling the 
earth with thy bounty so that all creatures, not excepting those that 
are seemingly most worthless, are still cared for. The insect of the 
air, the worm of the earth, the fish of the sea, the cattle upon a thou- 
sand hills, all things that are created, are objects of thy thought. 
Thou dost watch over them ; and how much more is man, made in 
thine image, destined to draw near unto thee, and to become a son 
of God in the heavenly land, perfected. In thee is our hope. Not 
in ourselves, but in the greatness, in the mercy, in the grace, and in 
the everlasting bounty of our God, we find inspiration of hope and 
of trust; for thou dost shelter those that know how to come under- 
neath the shadow of thy wings. Thou art the tower to which, when 
hard pressed, thy people run, and are saved from their pursuers. 
Thou art the shadow of a great rock in a weary land ; and blessed 
are they that know how to sit down in the shade in the midst of sur- 
rounding heat. We desire, O Lord our God, that thy name may 
shine more clearly, and that thy heart may be more aboundingly 
known among thine own people, and that those who are children 
may become witnesses more worthy of their parentage, and have 
more of joy and strength and faith and patience ministered unto 
them through the might and goodness of their God. 

Vouchsafe thy blessing to rest upon us now, in the hour in which 
we are gathered together. How many of us ! From what diverse 
ways! From what different experiences! And yet all united to- 
gether by common infirmity, by common sinfulness, by a common 



WHAT IS RELIGION? 25 

need of forgiveness, and by a common necessity for that love which 
comes only from the soul of God. 

Vouchsafe to each one in thy presence, this morning, that which 
each one needs. Search the hidden grief of every one, and either 
heal it or give grace to bear it. Be with those that are near to thee 
in supplication day by day, and that will not let thee go without the 
blessing longed for, more precious to them than life itself. Hear 
their prayers, and answer them. 

Those that carry sorrows, and wear them as a garment all the 
year round, and are acquainted with grief— vouchsafe thy presence, 
likewise, this day to them ; and may they hear inwardly their name 
called of thee, even as Mary, in the midst of her tears, was called by 
her name by our Lord and Saviour. 

And we beseech of thee that thou wilt strengthen the weak, and 
succor those that are in peril through overmastering temptations. 
Deliver from evil those that are beginning to be drawn into its whirl. 
"We beseech thee that thou wilt look piteously upon every want and 
every necessity. May those that hunger and thirst after righteousness 
more and more be fed and filled. May those that are drawing near 
to the confines of life rejoice and look away to that eternal youth 
beyond, which waits for them. May those that are in the midst of 
life fulfill their duties with a right manly sincerity and earnestness. 
May those that are young grow up uncontaminated. With truth 
and honor and manhood un defiled may they enter into the places of 
those that are departing, and do better than their fathers have done. 
We beseech of thee that thou wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon all 
our friends that are separated from us. Go with us homeward. Lead 
us to our children and our children's children, to our companions, to 
our parents, to our brothers and sisters, far away across the seas, 
in the wilderness, everywhere; and unite us in that love which 
is upon them and upon us at the same time. 

We beseech thee that thcu wilt grant thy blessing to rest upon 
this house and household; upon those ti/at abide here and minister 
to our comfort; upon all that are gathered here to spend the days of 
vacation ; and grant that this house may be fiUed with peace and 
joy. May everything that is benign and pure rule over whatever 
is selfish and proud and hateful. May the spirit of joy and of 
gladness, springing from sincerity and purity, prevail here from 
hour to hour, so that the blessing of the Lord shall dwell upon this 
place forever more. 

We commend ourselves to thee. Take care of us while we live. 
Mark our years out for us. Not for our asking give us more or less, 
but according to thy wisdom. Think for us, dear Lord; ordain for 
us ; and then make us able to say, in every emergency, The will of 
the Lord be done ; till we have passed the vail, and the shadows flee, 
and the morning comes. Arise, O Sun of Righteousness, with healing 
in thy beams, and bring ua where there is no night and no more sor- 
row forever. Amen. 



26 WHAT IS RELIGION? 

PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

Quicker our faith, Almighty God. O thou Saviour that hast 
loved us, and loved us in our weakness and want, and art loving us 
into strength, and into truth, aud into justice, and into patience, and 
into godliness, love us still. This is a wonder that we never could 
interpret if. we had not been parents ourselves. See how we love 
our children, though they be erring. Others do not love them in 
their weakness, but we do ; and thou lookest out of a larger heart 
of the same kind as ours. But while thou knowest how to teach the 
lore of love, thou knowest how to lay upon men responsibility; for 
whom thou lovest thou chastenest, and scourgest every son whom 
thou receivest. May we, then, have more and more confidence in 
thee, and accept the duties aud discipline of life with more gratitude 
aud cheerfulness and hopefulness, looking forward; for we are not 
to stay a great while here. "We are in tabernacles. The city that 
hath foundations is not far off. We hear the voices of its inhabitants. 
From off the walls come wafted to us, now and then, the word of 
cheer, Come; and he that hears repeats it, and says Come; and 
whosoever will, let him come. And all are coming. All find their 
way back toward the Sun of Righteousness. 

Grant, O Lord our God, that we may have more faith in thee, 
more hope for the world, more sympathy for the race, more kindness 
toward each other, so that we may stand holding each other up, 
pitying each other's faults, helping those that are cast down, and 
doing most for those that are most needy. May we seek out those 
that are in sorrows, and minister to them. Make us like thyself, thou 
that didst give thy life, laying it down and taking it up again, and 
that art forever, in heavenly places, carrying thy life, not for thy- 
self, but for others; and being made like thee, may we be called sons 
of God, and find rest with thee in the heavenly land. We ask it 
through riches of grace in Christ Jesus. Amen. 



n. 

Cheistiaf Sympathy. 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 



" For as we have many members in one body, and all members 
have not the same office ; so we, being many, are one body in Chiist, 
and every one members one of another." — Rom. xii. 4, 5. 



Is this sympathetic unity a peculiarity of church life ? 
Are these words meant to explain simply that when a great 
number of persons are joined in a church connection they 
are in a spiritual, sympathetic unity ? Yes, it means that, on 
the way to something a great deal larger than that. It is the 
declaration — and the spirit of it runs through the New Testa- 
ment, and colors every part of it — it is the declaration that 
the ideal condition of the human race is one in which man- 
kind are knit together by a sympathy which makes one man 
the brother of another man, the world over ; and that too, 
as is explained by the Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians, the 
12th chapter, without regard to nationality, or sect, or con- 
dition in life — whether bond or free, Jew or Gentile, in the 
church or out of the church. The ideal condition, or that 
condition toward which God's providence is steadily conduct- 
ing the races of the world, and which they will reach when 
they shall be ripe, is a condition in which every man shall 
feel that every other man is a part of himself ; or, in other 
words, in which every man shall feel as a parent feels in the 
family, that every other person is in one sense a part of him- 
self. Mankind will yet come — they are not in a hurry, but 
they will come — ^to that condition in which nothing will be so 

Preached at the Twin MouNTArN' Hoitse, White Mountains, N. H., Sunday morn- 
ing, August 30th, 1874. Lesson : Bom. zii. Hymns (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 102, 
632. 



30 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

near to the heart of man as man, without regard to the fact 
of relationship, kindred, interest, or neighborhood. The time 
is approaching when the mere fact that one is a human being 
will open and kindle the hearts of men toward him in all 
sympathy and kindness. 

It is of this unity, which springs from the Gospel — the 
sympathetic unity of soul with soul — that I shall speak this 
morning. 

I have said that this was not a matter of the artificial life 
of the church ; and let me say that I look upon the church, 
not as a substitute for anything, but simply as an instru- 
ment, as an educating institutioD, by which God attempts to 
diffuse the light and knowledge of true manhood throughout 
the race. It is a subservient institution. It is not itself a 
primary thing. It is secondary. In the work of ages the 
church is full of grandeur and excellence ; yet it is simply 
subordinate, doing the Master's will. 

God's heart and God's purpose are the salvation of the 
world ; and it is the deliverance, the elevation of every living 
human being on the globe, that lies before the divine mind as 
the reason and motive of administration through the perio«.s 
of time ; and the church bears relation to this great end just 
as the common school bears relation to the prevalence of 
intelligence through the community. We believe in schools 
and academies ; but we value the community more than 
we do even them. Their worth lies in the fact that they 
are blessing the whole community. They are not in them- 
selves sacred ; they are not valuable except for such worthy 
objects as they may serve ; they are good for what they do : 
and the church is good for only that which it accomplishes. 
"What is greater than any church is that for which the church 
was created — namely, universal mankind. 

"We are therefore to suppose, not that God is working for 
the Jew or for the Gentile, for the Asiatic or for the African, 
for the European or for the American, but for all of them. 

We are not to suppose that the divine providence is 
watching alone over good people, virtuous people, healthy 
people ; it watches over all alike. It makes the sun to rise 
on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 31 

on the unjust. The divine purposes have respect to every 
one, everywhere, without regard to nationality or condition. 

Such is the ideal state. It is one toward which the feel- 
ings of sympathy, of benevolence, and of love, man for man, 
are perpetually tending. 

So, wlaen we speak of the unity which all mankind are 
seeking, we shall not be able to form a just opinion respect- 
ing it unless we take into consideration this internal unity. 
Everybody wants unity in the churches, everybody is striving 
to bring them together ; and there would be no difficulty in 
uniting them outwardly if that were enough ; but what 
would be the advantage of a mere external unity of the 
churches ? 

What advantage would it be in a village if all the inhabi- 
tants should say, ^' The citizens of this village should be 
perfectly united ; and, therefore, let us move our houses up 
so that they will touch each other. Moreover, let all the peo- 
ple of this town have the one name, Adams. Let them all 
call themselves, and be called, by that name. Besides, let us 
all have breakfast and dinner and supper at the same hour 
and minute, at the stroke of the bell/^ They might secure 
unity in these outward things, so as to be able to say, '^ There 
is not such a united village in the world as we are ; " but 
what would be the advantage of mere external unity in a vil- 
lage ? Suppose every village in the land should march in 
such a unity, as soldiers march on a parade, would they be 
any better or happier ? Physical, material unity may flatter 
pride, perhaps, and give argument for boasting ; but it will 
not raise a man one step in the scale of intelligence, or make 
him kinder, or destroy his prejudices. It will not make the 
cruel man lenient, nor the impatient man long-suffering, nor 
the despotic man merciful. It will do no good. 

But the churches have been calling to each other for 
unity. The Presbyterian church is going to have one church 
throughout the world when the kingdom of Christ comes ; 
and that one church is going to be a Presbyterian church. 
The Episcopalian church is going to have one great church ; 
and that great church is going to eat up all the little 
churches ; and it is going to be an Episcopal church. The 



32 chbistIj±n sympathy. 

same is true of the Baptist and Methodist churches. But 
the Congregatioualists believe in none of these hierarchies ; 
they believe that each of them has some elements of truth, 
and that when the millennium comes, that which is good in all 
of them will be gathered up and brought together ; and this 
means that all Christendom is going to be Congregational ! 

But the church a man is in is much like the clothes he 
wears, provided he is fitted. I wear black, and some of 
you wear blue. Some of you wear short coats, and some 
long. Some wear one kind of hat, and some another. It is 
not the hat, not the coat, nor anything of the kind, that we 
think about in judging of a man's character ; and the fact 
that there are different denominations or sects is of little 
account if only they behave themselves, and do not quarrel, 
and are peaceable, and are not arrogant, and do not pretend 
that they are the one people who know God's secrets, and do 
not claim to be ordained to rule over their fellow-men, and 
do not sit on their peculiar throne of creed or church and 
say to all others, '' Bow down to us when you hear our sack- 
but and psaltery, or we will burn you up." The trouble is, 
not that there are so many sects, but that they are often 
weak in that which is good, and strong in that which is bad. 

It is not, therefore, organic unity, nor unity of belief 
exactly, that we are seeking. I never saw a mau who was 
large enough to report the whole truth in respect to anything 
which he looked at. It has not been considered safe, I 
think, in heaven, where the manufactory of men is, to put 
everything in everybody. The result is, that one man carries 
so much, another man so much, and another man so much. 
Why, it takes about twenty men to make one sound man. 
One man is hopeful and impetuous ; another is cautious and 
slow ; and the two put together would make a much more 
evenly balanced man than either of them is separately. One 
man is reflective ; another is perceptive ; and the two united 
would make a better man than either of them alone. One 
man looks at things as an enthusiast ; another sees things 
in a matter-of-fact light ; and if the two were put together 
they would temper each other. And when fifteen or twenty 
men come together, and accept the truth as it is seen by all 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 33 

of them combined, they have a far more comprehensive 
knowledge of it than they would have if they only saw it 
from their individual standpoints. When each one has 
made his statement of it, and infused into it all the elements 
that are in him, they will be nearer to a full presentation of 
it than any one of them could come simply by his under- 
standing of it. 

Men want unity of belief ; but I would like to know how 
they are going to have it so long as they are made to differ as 
they do now. For instance, here is a man of enormous self- 
esteem. Firmness stands like an adamantine column in his 
disposition. He sees everything in the light of duty and law. 
He says, '^It is the business of men to obey the law ;" and 
he sympathizes with the magistrate. Says he, "If men 
have sinned they ought to be punished ; the law was made to 
punish sinners" — and he would hke to be the man to carry 
it out. He is, every particle of him, in sympathy with gov- 
ernment and law. 

Take another man. He has enormous benevolence ; he 
has not much self-esteem ; and he sympathizes with men 
instead of laws. He sees everything in its relations to the 
poor and suffering and needy. 

One of these men will say, ''The law is broken, and 
penalty must follow." The other will say, ''Oh, poor trans- 
gressors ! what will become of them ? " 

How are you going to make men who are organized so 
differently read the Bible and see everything alike ? When 
you read the Bible you will see one thing, and when another 
reads the Bible he will see another thing, owing to the differ- 
ences of your organizations. 

If you mix on a plate iron filings, pieces of flint, a little 
Indian meal, and a little flour, and take a magnet, and draw 
it through, it will not touch the meal nor the flour nor the 
flint, but it will pick up all the iron filings. 

Now, men are magnets, and if you draw them through 
the Bible they will catch the things which they are sensitive 
to, while they wiU pass by the things which they are not 
sensitive to. Proud, domineering men will catch the ele- 
ments which tend toward government. Kind, generous^ 



34 CHBISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

democratic people will catch the elements that tend toward 
kindness and generosity and democracy. Men who are char- 
acterized by taste will catch the elements of taste. Those of 
imagination will catch poetic elements. Each one will catch 
those elements which are peculiar to himself. 

How, then, are you going to take men as they are made, 
and make them beheye alike ? Some persons are so dry that 
you might soak them in a joke for a month, and it would not 
go through their skin. No explanation would suffice to make 
them understand it. They must accept it by faith if they 
accept it at alL And yet, there are other persons who are so 
sensitiye to everything that is humorous or ludicrous that 
probably there is not a thing on earth that does not, first or 
last, suggest something funny to them. How are you going 
to take such minds, and make them look along the track of 
truth and see alike ? They are made differently, and it is 
not without a purpose. For variety — organized variety — is 
strength. A community is strong by the differences and not 
by the liknesses that exist in it. 

Suppose every man in a town were a blacksmith, and 
nothing else ! Fortunately it is never so. Among the people 
in a town, some are tinners, some are hatters, some are 
weavers, some are carpenters, some are painters, some are 
merchants, and some are bankers. The town is rich by the 
variety of its trades and callings. 

Now, in beliefs there are certain great stable, funda- 
mental facts which nobody doubts ; as, for instance, that of 
sunrise or sunset. We all believe in the revolution of the 
globe. All men agree in regard to certain fixed truths in 
mathematics. There is no great schism in the matter of 
arithmetic ; everybody acknowledges that two and two 
make four. But when you come to questions which involve 
feehng, probably no two persons agree at all. If you could 
sharply look in and see just how the same proposition strikes 
two persons, you would probably find that if it was a proposi- 
tion where emotion was concerned they would not agree. It 
is colored in one, perhaps, by imagination, which is predom- 
inant in him, and in the other by a predominating reflective 
reason. One person is cautious and hesitant, and another is 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY, 35 

headlong and venturesome, and these facts make it impossible 
for them to view the same truth in the same light. One 
man is remarkable for coolness, and another for intensity of 
feeling ; and they will differ in their impressions of a truth 
according to their individualism s. 

These things being so, how preposterous it is for any 
church to undertake to give a solution of the nature oi God, 
which involves every conceivable question of human disposi- 
tion ! We can know God only so far as we have sparks of 
him in ourselves. To delineate the whole history of divine 
providence for thousands of years ; to explain the various 
questions of moral government which arise ; to determine the 
various methods and doctrines of responsibility and penalty 
and reward ; to unfold the whole theory of the human mind ; 
to undertake encyclopediacal knowledge, running through the 
whole career of the race — how shall this be done so that 
everybody shall see everything just exactly alike ? It is abso- 
lutely impossible. God laughs when he sees fool Man trying 
to do it. It is against nature. So, all the strifes and quar- 
rels of the different sects, to bring everybody to see things 
just as they see them, are waste work. It never wiU be done. 

Well, as you cannot have external and organic unity, nor 
an exact unity of beliefs, from the very structure of the 
human mind, there seems to be but one other kind of unity 
that you can come to ; and that is the unity of the Spirit in 
the bond of perfectness, or sympathetic unity. 

Come, go with me into a house where there is father, 
where there is mother, where there are eight children, where 
there are two servants, and where there are three or four 
friends. They are all of one church ; they are all of one 
business ; they aU live under one roof ; they all either are of 
one name, or are very nearly associated in name ; and you 
say, '* They are at perfect unity." No, they are not; they 
quarrel like cats and dogs. It is an unhappy household. 
They have all the unity that the church is striving after; 
but it does them no good. 

Go with me into another house. There are father and 
mother, and eight children, and two or three friends ; and 
they are sweet-tempered, genial and kind ; but they belong 



36 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY, 

to Yery different churches. They are gathered together from 
Tarious quarters ; but they all happen to be alike in loying 
each other. They think differently and believe differently, 
but that does not prevent their being united. Difference is 
perfectly compatible with unity. For, are there not four 
parts to a good tune ? and do not all these parts help each 
other ? Differences are only methods of unity, provided they 
are concordant. 

In the great family here at this [Twin Mountain] house 
there is more unity to-day than there is at large in any 
church or sect in Christendom. You have come together 
from every direction ; there are hardly any two of you of 
the same name ; you are crowded into this room under cir- 
cumstances of very great inconvenience ; and yet you are 
pohte one to another. You are willing that all others 
should have seats ( — after you are provided for !) There is no 
strife here. You are harmonious. You wish well to each 
other. You are even kindly disposed to believe what I say. 
And jet you are from different churches. You belong to 
sects of almost every name ; but still, there is a genial, kind 
sympathy existing between you. In short, you are gentlemen 
and ladies — for the time being ! Everything moves in 
unison. And I will venture to say that there is not a room 
in this house where there will not be greater happiness 
after this service. I wiU venture to say that you will feel 
kinder to each other, and nearer to each other, and more 
helpful of each other, during this week for the experience of 
this morning ; it is the natural result of a season of united 
feelings. And I ask you if such unity is not the best kind. 
I ask you if inward, sympathetic, benevolent unity is not the 
unity that does good. 

This, then, is the dominant Christian idea of oneness — 
namely, unity of the heart. A man who is royally endowed 
with bodily and mental gifts, and who holds himself in such 
a sweet alliance with every human being that he carries him- 
self genially and helpfully toward all, is a true Christian. Of 
course such a man carries himself so toward those that he 
loves as his own ; but let a man who is blessed with a supe- 
rior intellect, with rare physical endowments, and with cir- 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 37 

cumstances favorable to their development and use, carry 
himself in a spirit of kindness and gentleness toward the 
poorest, the lowest and the meanest, and he represents the 
ideal of Christian manhood. When a man comes to that high 
state he is Christ's, not only, but he exhibits Christ to men. 
When the church comes to that state it instantly becomes the 
true catholic church — that is to say, it becomes the church 
which is going to take possession of the world — the church 
of the heart, the church of sympathy, the church of benevo- 
lence, the church of love. 

By this spirit of sympathy one with another, I remark 
first, all hatreds, and all injurious conduct under different 
names of pretension, are forbidden. We have no right "to in- 
flict pain except as a physician administers bitter medicines. 
We have no right to make men suffer except as a surgeon am- 
putates a limb. We have no right to resort to penalties ex- 
cept as the schoolmaster punishes his pupils. We may inflict 
pain and cause suffering and resort to penalties so far as they 
are necessary to prevent the repetition of evil in an indivi- 
dual, or to prevent others from experiencing them, under 
which circumstances they are not cmel. No human being 
has a right to cause any form of injury except for a benevo- 
lent purpose. The doctrines that teach that God's admin- 
istration in the world is one of vengeance, and that it is 
continued for no other reason than because God chooses 
to perpetuate ifc, make God a demon, and not a Father. 
All pains and penalties are to be beneficent, and they are 
to be administered beneficently. A judge has no right to 
judge a man with a cold, unsympathizing heart. A father 
has no right to punish a child with an unfeeling, angry 
spirit. No man has a right to mulct his neighbor, or inflict 
suffering upon him in any way, except for his good. No 
man knows what justice is who does not know what love 
is. There is no justice except the equity that moves under 
the influence of love. This is the Christian doctrine. All 
other doctrines are anti-Christian. 

Secondly, this spirit of universal sympathy, this spirit of 
brotherhood between man and man, forbids envy and jealousy 
of every kind. You perhaps do not believe that there are such 



38 CHBISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

things as envy and Jealousy ; but if these qualities could only 
squeak like unoiled hinges, there would be such a noise in 
every community that you would think Bedlam had been let 
loose. Envies and jealousies do not generally go out except 
in masquerade. They put on various masks and disguises of 
society — philosophic statements and the like ; but back of 
these all their hateful features are to be seen. The commu- 
nity is full of persons who are unhappy because other persons 
are better off than they. One man gets what another man 
coveted ; and the latter says, " There ! he has got the prop- 
erty that is mine — that is, that I wanted." The rich and the 
poor look with jealousy upon each other. The poor are angry 
because the rich get so much while they get so little ; and 
the rich are angry because the poor are in the way of their 
getting more. Competitors in politics or merchandise look 
at each other with the lower and smaller forms of petty envy 
and jealousy. 

But, the word of God says, '^In honor preferring one 
another.'' It enjoins upon us the duty of giving the prefer- 
ence to others. Does anybody really do this ? Yes ! I should 
like to know if the mother, when she sits down to the table 
with her children, picks out the best things, and eats them, 
aud gives the children what is left. Does not she in love 
prefer every child ? And, going down, she is more attentive 
to the youngest than to those that are older. She does not 
disown the twenty-one-year-old boy, nor the sixteen-year-old, 
nor the twelve-year-old ; but, after all, the little babe in the 
cradle rules the whole of them. Her sensibility and kindness 
increase in the ratio of their need, 

Now, that which the mother feels is the type of universal 
motherhood, or the true Christian feeling when it shall have 
been ripened in human nature. Every man is to come into 
that state in which he shall feel for others kindness and good- 
will, so that their prosperity shall be his joy, and so that if 
he puts out his hand for some promised fruit, and another, 
quicker than he, gets it, he shall draw back his hand and say, 
" Thank God, it is yours. I am glad that you got it." That 
is not the way that men do now-a-days generally ; but it is 
the Christian way. 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 39 

In politics men do not prefer one another. They strive 
by every means to prevent the community from preferring 
others. Men are standing on the ground of selfish animal- 
ism. Society is organized on the same principles of offense 
and defense which prevail among the beasts of the field. 
The law of strength and violence is a hundred times stronger 
in the world to-day, outsid' of the household, than the law 
of kindness and love and sympathy. But there is a day com- 
ing when the household feeling will become the neighborhood 
feeling, and the town feeling, and the county feeling, and 
the state feeling, and the national feeling. Then, when 
nation after nation comes into this higher manhood, and the 
public sentiment of the globe begins to be that of love and 
sympathy, the new heaven and the new earth in which dwell- 
eth righteousness will have come. 

We are far from that day. We see the dim morning twilight 
which foretokens it, but that is all ; yet the day is coming 
when the animal in men will not predominate as it does now. 

So the true spirit of the Christian man condemns indif- 
ference ; and for the same reason that it condemns this it 
condemns all neglect, all carelessness. They are wrong. You 
have no right to be without feeling for others. It may be 
that your occupation is such that you are absent-minded ; 
but no man ought to be in the presence of another person, 
though it be only a child, and a beggar's brat, without expe- 
riencing a feeling of interest in that person. Anything that 
has the stamp of humanity on it ought to excite in your 
bosom positive sympathy and good will. 

It would be impossible for a man to walk in a gallery of 
magnificent pictures and not be affected by them, unless he 
was absent-minded ; and it ought to be impossible for a man 
to walk among men and not have a genial, brotherly feeling 
toward them. Strangers come together, and not having been 
introduced they will walk past each other time and again, 
and never exchange a word. Men wiU ride together for 
hours in a stage-coach without any intercourse whatever ; or 
if there is any, it will be of the most formal character, be- 
cause they have not been introduced to each other. 

Manv men who are not church-members have more true 



40 CHRISTIAJSr SYMPATHY. 

Christian spirit in them than many who are ; for they do 
not go anywhere without feeling kindness, gentleness, good- 
humor, good-nature — and good-nature, if it is not a grace, is 
the nurse of all graces, that brings them up. The man who 
carries that with him everywhere and always is better than a 
man that is gruffly orthodox. 

There are men who go about making eyerbody happy — 
and it does not take a great deal to make men happy, often- 
times. A little attention makes some people happy. 

I recollect meeting in the street, in Brooklyn, one day, a 
carpenter who had made some repairs on my house. I stop- 
ped and said, "How do you do?" and shook hands with 
him. " Now," said he, " you big folks, who live in fine 
houses, do not know how much good it does a poor fellow 
when you speak to him and shake hands with him ; but I tell 
you it does him a great deal of good. Why, your stopping 
and speaking to me, and shaking hands with me, will make 
me and my folks happy for a week. When I go- home to- 
night my wife will say, * Where have you been ? and who 
have you seen ?' and I will say, ^ I have seen Mr. Beecher.' 
'What did he say?' 'Oh, he shook hands with me, and 
asked after my family.' She will go on asking questions, and 
the children will ask questions, and we shall talk about it all 
the evening, and all the week, and it will make us all happy. 
It isn't much to you, but it is a good deal to us." 

There is many a man in this audience who could make 
happiness follow him as phosphorescent light follows a ship's 
wake on the sea ; but most of you are so genteel that you 
do not think it would be proper for you to have to do with 
others unless you have been introduced; and some of you 
say, '' It is not for us to mix with the vulgar herd;" and 
others are timid and sensitive, and hesitate on that account. 
But there is not one of you that is not honored and beloved of 
Grod in the proportion in which you let your light shine so that 
other men may walk in the path which you make luminous. 

Indifference to men is a sin. It is not necessary to your 
being a criminal that you should murder, or commit bur- 
glary, or set a house on fire, or pick some man's pocket. If 
you take your culture, and taste, and sensibility, and wrap 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 41 

yourself up in them, and walk alone among your fellow-men, 
touching nobody, kindling nobody, sympathizing with no- 
body, except one here and there whom you select as a com- 
panion for yourself, you are a criminal before God ; and there 
is many a man that walks thus who is a greater sinner than 
the man who is hanged, for the law of Christian sympathy is 
absolute ; it is the imperial law of the realm. It is the ideal 
of Christian life ; and he who violates it by counting his 
fellow-men as nothing, as dust under his feet, as dirt, violates 
the fundamental law of the universe, and is a criminal. 

We always sympathize to a certain extent. He is a bad 
man who does not sympathize with his own kin — though 
often you find men who do not do it. Not unfrequently you 
find that men who are benign on the street are ugly at home ; 
and, quite as frequently, you find that men who are hard, and 
whose teeth are like knives in business, are very saints at 
home. You could not pry open their hand with a burglar's 
tool on the street ; but when they go home it is broad open. 
They would not give anything outside of their household ; but 
if their wife and children want anything they readily grant it. 
If you saw them at home and nowhere else you would say 
that they were princes of generosity ; but if you saw them 
abroad and nowhere else you would say that they were tighter 
than the bark on growing trees. Now, we should expect a 
man to be in sympathy with those who bear his name and 
carry his blood ; but that is not enough. ^' If ye love them 
that love you, what thank have ye ?" ''If ye salute your 
brethren only, what do ye more than others ? Do not even 
the publicans the same ? " 

With our neighbors, also, we are apt to be in sympathy — 
provided it is not when we are in collision. For example, on a 
holiday, at a military muster, or on any occasion that brings 
the people together, there is generally a good-nature, a kind- 
ness of feeling, manifested by neighbors toward each other, 
which is not usual at other times and places. Men who at 
home, working on their farms or in their shops, do not care 
for their neighbors, when they get away from home, and meet 
them as persons that live near them, feel very much drawn 
toward them. 



42 CHBISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

You will see that in traveling abroad. Men to whom in 
Brooklyn I nsed to say a simple ** Good morning," in Paris, 
when I was home-sick, I wanted to put my arms about. 
They lived near where I lived, and that was under the cir- 
cumstances a sufficient reason for my feeling drawn to them. 
It is a diffusive form of selfishness which leads you, when 
you are away from home, and see persons who live near where 
you do, to sympathize with them. People sympathize with 
their own households, with their neighbors, and with their 
own countrymen, as against foreigners. 

Men having the same .interests — as, for instance, stock- 
holders in the same concern, if it is paying a good dividend 
— sympathize with each other. Selfishness sympathizes with 
selfishness, everywhere and always. We sympathize with per- 
sons of our own sect. We sympathize with them intensely 
when they are attacked by another sect, though not so in- 
tensely at other times. When nobody attacks us, we go to 
work to point out heresy among ourselves, and are like 
hounds pursuing each other. There never was a man on 
earth so orthodox but that there was somebody a little higher 
than he in orthodoxy who looked down upon him, and said, 
^'You are not orthodox." There is always some one who 
thinks he is a little nearer to God than anybody else. The 
scale is infinitesimal; and when there is not a revival, or 
some other special influence to knit men together, those of 
the same denomination are apt to criticise each other if there 
is tlie difference of a hair between them. If a Methodist 
brother builds his fence three-quarters of an inch over the 
line on the land of another Methodist brother, that is enough 
to furnish a pretext for all manner of lawsuits and quarrels — 
unless there is a great religious awakening, or unless there is 
some squabble between some other denomination and the 
Methodists, in which case these two brethren join hands and 
fight the common enemy. Men that quarrel with each other 
on farming will unite their forces in a Presidential election, 
and shout, and grow red in the face, in contending for their 
favorite candidate or party. An attack on sectarians from 
the outside brings them together very quick and very close. 

And that is carried further. Men outside of the church 



CHRISTIAN SY3IPATHT. 43 

having so good an example in the church, why should they 
not follow it ? As sectarians herd with sectarians, as men in 
one church sympathize with each other as against those of 
another church, so you will find men in society at large 
limiting their sympathy and good-will very nearly to those of 
their own sort. 

In speaking thus, I do not undertake to lay down an 
extravagant doctrine, and say that we have no right to like 
those that are of our sort : we have that right. If I love 
painting, I have a right to associate especially with those who 
love painting. If I love reading, I have a right to associate 
with those who love reading. If I am a mechanic, I have a 
right to associate with mechanics. If I am a lawyer or jurist, 
I have a right to associate with men of that profession. I 
have a right to associate with men who are interested in the 
same things that I am. There is certainly a propriety in 
your following the law of affinity and likeness and prefer- 
ence in selecting your associates ; but I object to your whole 
manhood being absorbed in that way. I object to your 
taking those that you like, and refusing all others because 
they are not of your sect or set. I think it is a selfishness 
that God frowns upon, and one that hurts your soul. 

That is exactly the point that is brought out in the parable 
of the Grood Samaritan. A man went down from Jerusalem 
to Jericho, and fell among thieves, that stripped him of his 
raiment, and wounded him, and departed leaving him half 
dead. He lay as if he had been in Wall street. And when 
a certain priest came that way and beheld him, and saw by 
his look that he was not a priest, he walked on, saying to 
himself, ^' He is not of my set;" and he had no sympathy 
and no feeling of humanity for him. By and by. there came 
down a Levite, and he looked on him, and said, '^Poor 
feUow ! he has been rather roughly used," and walked on the 
other side. There came also down a Samaritan {Samaritan 
was a name as detestable in the Jews' ears as in your ears 
AloUtionist was twenty years ago) ; and he went where he 
was, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and 
put him on his own beast, and took him to the tavern, and 
paid his bills in advance, and said to the host, '' Take care of 



44 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

him ; and if any exigencies arise which shall make his ex- 
penses more, I will repay thee." ^^ Which of these three was 
neighbor to the man that fell among thieves?" asks the 
Master. Well, which was ? 

Thus, you take care of those that take care of you, and 
sympathize with those that sympathize with you, and that is 
right enough ; but you neglect those that are not of your sect 
and set and sort, and that is wrong. It is wicked. Every 
human being has a right in yon, and you have a right in 
every human being. On God's globe there is not a man — 
not even in the farthest China — who is not your brother. 
There is not a poor devotee on earth that bows down to river 
or star who is not your brother or sister. The whole human 
family is one, of whom God is the Father. The blood of 
Jesus Christ is stronger than the blood of any earthly father 
or mother ; and you are united by the blood of Christ into 
one great household. 

Look at the repugnances which spring up among men, 
and judge them according to this law which I have been 
developing. 

In the first place, we feel ourselves justified in having 
great indignation and great vindictiveness of feeling toward 
those who have by crime or vice forfeited their place and 
their citizens' right in society. I think the horror with which 
we teach our children to look upon thieves and burglars and 
harlots is one of the most pitiful of possible commentaries on 
human nature. I do not know that it is yet possible to bring 
to bear upon the criminal classes influences which shall 
wholly restrain them without resorting to the employment of 
physical force and the infliction of pain ; but judged by this 
higher ideal, what a state of things it is in which, when men 
need most, and are dying for the want of somebody to look 
after them, and take care of them, and bear with them, 
because they are sinful, there is not in the community a 
church, hardly an individual, that knows how to suffer for the 
outcast as Jesus Christ suffered for the whole world ! Christ 
died for his enemies, we are told. It is made conspicuous by 
every form of statement in. the New Testament that God so 
loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die for 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY, 45 

it, while it was afar off from him, utterly unlike him, and 
repugnant to every conception of infinite purity and good- 
ness. God's nature was such that he bowed down to succor 
and to save his creatures ; and when he rose from the dead he 
lifted the world on his shoulders ; yet in our own commu- 
nities, at this late period of Christian teaching, we are brought 
up to abhor jailbirds as we do toads, and to detest vicious 
and criminal men as if they were snakes and yipers ; and we 
shut them out of our hearts as if they were not men. 

Now, as I hold, we must abhor vice and crime, and all 
that is evil ; we must not introduce into our household econ- 
omy those who shall pervert and destroy the purity of our 
children ; we cannot be too careful on that side ; and yet 
there is no man so cruel that his cruelty is not a plea to our 
compassion ; and there is not a man so dishonest that his 
dishonesty is not a plea to our thoughtfulness and sympathy. 
If the SjDirit of Christ were in us, we should desire to succor 
most those who most need succor. No man is so much in 
peril as the man whose passions are corrupted ; and yet we 
tread down the criminal classes. But all such — the multi- 
tudes of vicious boys that run riot at night in our great 
cities ; the great mass of feculent sediment that infests our 
streets ; the thousands and hundreds of thousands that shock 
our taste and are repellent to our unsanctified natures — some- 
body must care for them or they will perish. God, methinks, 
the purest and the highest, is the only one that calls them 
brethren while we gather our garments up and walk on the 
other side, and leave them weltering in their vices. 

All who are by disposition unlovely we feel justified in 
turning our backs upon. We think we have a right to eschew 
their company and speak evil of them. Here is a man that 
is hard and grasping ; the whole neighborhood agree to 
call him an >ld hunks, an avaricious dog; and from the 
moment that is done, every thought we have about this man 
is one that strikes him. We do not pity him. We do not 
consider measures for his relief. We do not take remedial 
steps in respect to him. 

Lst a man come to this hotel, and let it be said of him, 
^'Do you see that man ? He was the guardian of an estate 



46 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

that was left to a family of cliildren, and he cheated thera 
out of it ; he has their property ; they are poor, and he is 
here spending their money. ^' That would be infamous, I 
admit ; but it would not justify me in treating him as if he 
were not a man. It would not be a reason why I should not 
preach to him and pray for him (for we are commanded to 
pray even for those who despitefully use us). He would not 
be out of the sphere of my sympathy because he was a wicked 
man. If you are a Christian, you ought to be in sympathy 
with men in the proportion in which they are wicked. 

We cite the faults and foibles of men as reasons why we 
do not want to have anything to do with them; and we 
submit them, often, to the raillery of the community. 

A man is constitutionally vain, but carries himseK with 
constant awkwardness, and does not know it perhaps ; and 
the young people whisper, and tell everything that they know 
about him, and ridicule him. 

• All churches talk about each other. And in politics and 
business men talk about each other. There is no Chris- 
tianity of any conspicuous eminence that teaches us to bear 
each other^s burdens. There is no Christianity that is very 
current which teaches us to sympathize with men because 
they are imperfect, or to take care of them because they 
have faults. There is no Christianity of any great prom- 
inence which teaches us to look after people's hearts on the 
same principle that we look after their bodies. 

We feel, also, that we have a right to toss the head about 
poor, ignorant, shiftless men, who do not succeed in life. 
Men say, *' Are you going to give anything more to that mis- 
erable creature ? You might just as well pour water into a 
sieve. You might as well put money in a bag with holes in 
it. Why, he is one of the poorest, laziest, most shiftless 
wretches in the world." I understand perfectly well that 
there is a political economy, and that it is not best to adopt 
a system that will put a premium on laziness or shiftlessness ; 
but do you know that laziness and shiftlessness are inborn ? 
Do you know that if you are smart you got your smartness 
from father, or mother, or both, by lineal descent ? Many 
persons are born without much will, and with very little 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 47 

force ; they have a sma]l stomach, no bigger than my hand ; 
and when they throw down food into it, it is like a mill which 
has not much power to grind ; and the blood that is made 
there is poor ; and there is but little of it ; the consequence 
is that when it is pumped up into the brain, haying been very 
poorly aerated, it does not stimulate the faculties a great 
deal ; it is pretty cold business that is carried on up there ; 
and when it goes down again, and around, it goes sluggishly; 
and when it returns to the brain there is not as much elec- 
tricity and snap and fire there in a whole day as you get in 
one single throb ; and yet you stand, with your superior en- 
dowment, over against that poorly-endowed, badly-born man, 
who never had even any education as a compensation for his 
bad birth, and say, ^' Poor devil ! let him alone. The best 
thing he can do is to die.'^ That may be ; but it is not very 
amiable for you to put him out of the pale of sympathy and 
succor simply because he needs so much. 

I do not blame you so severely because you have been so 
badly brought up. You have been studying catechisms and 
creeds so that you have had no time to study conduct. You 
have been so busy thinking about church machinery that you 
have not had much time to think about Christian spirit and 
life. You have studied the body until you have forgotten 
that there is such a thing as the soul, or until you act as 
though you had. I do not blame you altogether — I pity you. 
If there is anybody that needs pity it is a man in a Christian 
community who does not know how to love as Christ loves. 
Men sometimes pin a red or blue rag on their shoulder as a 
badge to show what organization they belong to ; and many 
professed Christians are known as such only by the rag of 
doctrine which they wear ; but if any man have not the spirit 
of Christ he is none of his. Was there a harlot in all Galilee 
that could look upon Christ and he not know it, and speak 
peaceable things to her ? And did he not abhor immorality ? 
Did not thefts, and whoredoms, and all forms of iniquity 
rise before him blacker than they can rise before the human 
imagination ? and yet, so much wickeder was it to be selfish 
with the intellect and the moral feelings than to be selfish 
with the passions, that he turned and looked upon the Phari- 



48 CHBISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

see and said, *^ The publicans and the harlots shall go into 
the kingdom of God before you." It is a solemn warning. 

We talk about civilization and Christianity in the world ; 
but when I see how men live ; when I see how much the 
malign passions rule and how little they are subdued, I feel 
that there is a great deal lacking of that which constitutes 
true civilization and Christianity among men in the com- 
munity at large ; and I ask, '' Where is beneficence ? Is 
benevolence a real vital principle ? Is everybody happier 
where you go? Does summer shine out of your soul and 
make summer for others ?" I do not care for your churches 
and doctrines if they do not create in you the fruit of the 
Gospel. Without love to God and men your professions are 
vain and empty. 

Now, I ask you whether there is not a difference between 
the natural man and the spiritual man. The common man 
is good-natured when everything pleases him. He has a sort of 
generous feeling when he has more than he knows what to do 
with. Under such circumstances he does not mind throwing 
out five dollars here and there, once in a while. He feels 
about money as I do about dirt. I do not value dirt very 
highly ; and if a man wants a handful of dirt I will give it 
to him. I will not be stingy about it. Men are very gene- 
rous when they begin to have a good deal ; but when they 
get rich they are apt to become penurious, and to be suspici- 
ous in every way. 

As it is with common men, so it is with Christians. 
When I see a man going about the community and prating 
about Christianity, I say to him, ^^ Where is the radical prin- 
ciple of the Gospel — ^love ? I do not care what church you 
are in. If you Hve in the spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ 
you are in the true church, no matter what the name of the 
external church to which you belong may be. If your spirit 
is one of kindness always and everywhere, you are right, no 
matter what teaching you have been under. The spirit of 
essential self-sacrifice and disinterested love is Christian, and 
nothing is Christian which comes short of that. In propor- 
tion as that spirit grows in you are you growing in grace, and 
orthodox ; but in proportion as you substitute outward con- 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 49 

formities for that spirit you are becoming heterodox, and 
going back to the world. " 

Oh, my friends, it is ineffably sweeter to be right in this 
regard. He who is right by the force of conscience is never 
so happy as he who is right by the force of love ; for con- 
science is a hard master, and carries a straight rule. The 
more acute your conscience is to inspire you to duty, the 
more it torments you when you violate your duty. Con- 
science is a despot. It almost never smiles ; it sits and 
scowls ; and its business is to flagellate rather than reward : 
but love suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not ; love 
vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself 
unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, think- 
eth no evil. Love, transcendent, shall abide when doctrines, 
and ordinances, and churches, and governments shall have 
passed away — when nothing else shall remain but the other 
supeme moral sentiments of the soul — faith and hope. Love, 
even in that hour, high above either of these, and above all 
other things, high above them as the spire of a cathedral is 
above the roof or the foundations — shall exist ; for it is God; 
and is yet to be God over all, blessed — because blessing — ^for 
ever and forever. 



50 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 



PEAYEE BEFOEE THE SEEMON. 

We rejoice, our Father, that thou art leading our thoughts up to 
thee hy all the associations of this sacred day ; by the familiarities of 
friendship; by the rejoicing of love; by all the blessed memories 
which come to us in the calm and quiet of the Sabbath. We thank 
thee that the whole week doth not need to rush on with care and 
burden ; and that we have a right to pause, and upon one whole day 
to rest in body and in soul, and to give our spirits, oppressed with 
labor and care, repose, or to give them incitement or instruction in 
the things that pertain to righteousness. 

Wilt thou grant thy blessing to rest upon this day, and upon all 
that are present in this assembly, coming from a hundred experiences, 
bearing each his own thread of history, with sorrows not alike but in 
common, with joys also in common, and yet strangely different. O 
Lord, as thou dost look upon every heart here, and see that it is in 
weakness and sinfulness, and in everlasting need of God's help, grant 
that to every one may be given, this morning, that quickening Spirit 
which bears to the soul peace, and purity, and the sense of forgive- 
ness and inspiration, so that courage, and hope, and joy may spring 
up from associations with thee. We need thy help, and thou art 
most helpful. We need thy forgiveness, and thou art most long- 
suffering, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin. Thou art patient 
with those who are seeking, even in the least degree, to live aright ; 
and assistance cometh to them from the divine offices of the Spirit. 
Not the sun, traveling in the greatness of his strength, sheds more 
light and life than thou, in the greater strength of thy nature, O Sun 
of righteousness, that dost come with healing in thy beams. Vouch- 
safe to every one in thy presence, this morning, we pray thee, the 
sanctifying influence of thy Spirit. We pray that thou wilt bless 
each one who puts forth the faintest endeavor to live better. May 
whatever is good in us ripen. May whatever is evil in us be more 
and more overruled. May we not refuse to go forward by sitting 
down in sinfulness and remorse, and forever looking backward and 
bemoaning our mistakes, or our want of improvement of privileges, 
or our sorrows in bereavement. May we forget what is behind. We 
are children not of the past, but of the future. We live by faith, and 
are JBlled with hope. May we look forward away from the mistakes 
and errors of the past. In the light of the hope that is in Christ 
Jesus, may we look forward and press forward toward the mark, for 
the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 

If there be those that are seeking to break down evil habits, give 
thOu them, we beseech of thee, strength not only, but patience to 
persevere therein. 

Be with those who are by every means endeavoring to build them- 
selves up better, and more and more Christlike. Give them power 
to gain perfect dominion, at length, over every appetite, over every 
lust, over all selfishness, over pride, and envy, and jealousy, and 
every malign passion that is in the soul. And may all those that are 
seeking good help each'other. Grant that there may be more pitif ul- 
ness in our souls toward any whose purposes are good, but who are 



CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY, 51 

wafted hither and thither, not by their own will, but by that which 
is around about them. 

"We pray that we may be bound in sympathy even to those who 
are evil. May our hearts yearn for them as thy heart yearns for us. 
What should we have been but for the thought of God resting upon 
us, and for thy grace and patience with us ? We should have been 
even as the poorest and most needy are. Let us, then, not be for- 
given, and be the recipients every day of thy bounty, and consume it 
selfishly upon ourselves, turning censoriously upon those that are 
less favored than we, and condemn them, or pass them by with indif- 
ference. May we be joined in heart to those who are beneath and 
far away from us, even as we are joined in a blessed unity to thee 
and to thy Spirit. 

Grant thy blessing to rest, we pray thee, to-day, upon this house, 
and all that dwell in it — upon those that direct and control it, and 
upon those that are recipients of their kindness. May thy blessing 
rest, also, upon all those who have gathered together here from 
neighboring places. Speak peace to every heart. Comfort the sor- 
rowing. Strengthen the wavering. Inspire those who are discour- 
aged. Give courage to men who are in places of peril, that they 
may resolutely, and with divine help, overcome their adversaries. 

We pray that thou wilt follow our thoughts; for what Sabbath 
morning dawns upon the earth that our hearts do not search out 
whom we love everywhere? Some are in distant lands, some are 
upon the sea, some are in far remote places in our own land, and 
some sit sorrowful in their homes, waiting and watching. Wherever 
they are whom we love, love thou them this day, and bear to them 
some sense of our sympathy ; and may our prayers fall as dews on 
flowers upon their heads. 

Let thy blessing rest upon all the interests of this great land. 
Bless the President of these United States, and all those who are 
joined to him in authority. Bless the Governors of the different 
States, and the magistrates therein, and the citizens belonging thereto. 
Spread abroad the light of knowledge, we pray thee. May schools 
and seminaries of every kind flourish. May intelligence prevail 
throughout the whole land. And grant that this great nation may 
grow up in strength both outward and inward, not to tread down 
the poor, the weak, and the oppressed. May this nation not be filled 
with greed and avarice, but may it at last begin to shine abroad 
with the true light of Christian kindness, and become the defender 
of the helpless, and an example to those who are toiling in oppres- 
sion. At last may that light come forth which shall emancipate 
the world. May men, touched with the divine Spirit, live again 
in their higher nature, and become too strong for manacles to hold 
them, and too wise for despots to oppress them. Thus may this 
whole world gome to its liberty by coming to the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and receiving the new manhood that is in Christ Jesus. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit, 
evermore. Amen. 



52 CHRISTIAN SYMPATHY. 

PRAYEE AFTEE THE SEEMOK 

LoRB, grant thy blessing to rest upon us, to give us an understand- 
ing heart, not only, t)ut to give us an applying disposition. Grant 
that the truth which we have heard may he as seed sown in good 
ground, springing up, and bringing forth a hundred fold. Pity those 
things which we blame in ourselves, and those things which we rep- 
rehend in others as their teachers. Have compassion upon us because 
we are sinners. Have compassion upon our motives. Have compas- 
sion upon all those faults which are full of weakness and selfishness. 
Thou that makest thy sun to rise on the good and bad alike, help us, 
because we need help. Thy goodness and our want join in one plea. 
Be merciful to us, and teach us to be merciful to each other. Spread 
abroad that large-mindedness and catholicity of feeling which shall 
unite us, with growing force, to thee and to our fellow-men, that at 
last we may understand thy law, that goes everywhere, disseminat- 
ing liberty, being imperious, and yet full of freedom. May each one 
of us hear and obey the command. Thou shalt love the Lord thy 
Grod with all thy heart and thy neighbor as thyself. And to thy 
name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit, evermore. Amen, 



1 



i 



III. 

LUMrKOUS HOUES. 



I 



LUMINOrS HOURS. 



I purpose giving, this morning, mainly a historic dis- 
course, tracing the line of events that preceded and imme- 
diately followed that scene of unparalleled simplicity and 
beauty of which we read in the opening service — the Trans- 
figuration. I know of scarcely another point in the narrative 
of our Master's life, around which there are so many inter- 
esting questions, and from which may be drawn so many 
threads woven into instruction so perfectly, and of such im- 
portance. 

The first question that arises is in regard to the time. As 
you will perhaps bear in mind, in the narrative that we read 
from Luke (for this event is described by Matthew in the 
17th chapter, and by Mark in the 9th chapter, as well as by 
Luke in the 9th chapter) it is said, '^ About an eight days 
after, (that, evidently, is a phrase used as we say ^ About 
a week,' or * About ten days.' Both of the other evan- 
gelists say, ^ After six days,') he took Peter and James and 
John, and went up into the mountain to pray." These three 
disciples seem to have been the most intelligent and the most 
useful of the disciple band. They were the ones that almost 
always accompanied the Saviour. They seem to have been 
men of some mark and character. Certainly they proved 
afterwards that they were more active than any of the others. 
James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were called *^ Sons of 
Thunder." They were men of work. And when the Saviour 
went off on any mission, he took Peter, James and John with 
him. You will recollect that the mother of John and James 

Preached at the Twint Mount ain House, White Mountains, N. H., Sunday mem- 
Ing, Sept. 6th, 1874. Lesson : Luke ix., 28-^3. Hymns (Plymouth Collection) • Nos. U9 
564, Doxology. 



56 LUMINOUS HOURS. 

undertook to make them Prime Minister and Treasurer of 
the new kingdom, saying to Christ, " Grant that these my 
two sons may sit, the one on thy right hand, and the other 
on the left, in thy kingdom." They had a natural ascendency 
over the other disciples, and it excited envy and jealousy 
among them. The dispute on the way to Jerusalem, as to 
who of them should he greatest, came in part from this. 

Now, Jesus took these three disciples, it is said, six days . 
after. Six days after what ? Well, so far as we have any in- 
formation, after nothing. It reveals, in one sense, we may 
say, the loose way in which the gospels were constructed. 
What is the origin of the four lives of Christ ? If Prescott 
should sit down to write the life of Ferdinand and Isabella 
he would first collect facts, dates, etc., belonging to their 
career, as guides or milestones by which he would travel 
through their history. These he would arrange, introducing 
the various characters, and unfolding their experiences, step 
by step, year by year, and putting them in the relation of 
cause and effect, of precedent and consequent. 

Were the four Gospels written in that way ? Did Matthew, 
under the divine inspiration, sit down, begin at the begin- 
ning, and go right straight through to the end ? He did not. 
Neither did Mark, nor did Luke, who was the most method- 
ical of all of the evangelists ; noj did John, who wrote the 
last Gospel many, many years after the others were written. 

It is to be remembered that our Master, so far as we 
know, never wrote a line. It is one of the things to be 
remarked with wonder, that that man, whose influence has 
been revolutionary in time, and on the globe, never put pen 
to paper. Not only that, but nothing went down as coming 
accurately from his lips, and by his direct authority — not one 
single scrap. All that- we have of his sayings and teachings 
was caught up, as it were. The disciples were with him in 
the valleys, on the mountain sides, in obscure fishing villages, 
and in the despised province of Galilee ; for at the cruci- 
fixion, you will recollect, it was said to them, ** Your speech 
bewrays [betrays] you," and they were taunted as having 
come from Galilee. The inhabitants of Galilee were despised 
in Jerusalem as in Boston men are if they do not live in the 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 57 

''polished city;" as they are in New York, if they do not 
live in the "metropolitan city;" as they are in London, if 
they are not Londoners ; and as they are in Paris, if they 
are not Parisians. These were refined men, and esthetic 
people, and orthodox folks, who regarded Galilee as a con- 
temptible province. As the eJews despised the Gentiles, so 
the Greeks and Romans despised the provinces. And five- 
sixths, nine-tenths, nineteen-twentieths, of our Lord's life, 
was passed in that province. But his instructions there were 
not registered. He took no pains to have them sent out. 
He spoke them, and let them alone, and they rested sim- 
ply in the memory of those who were around about him ; 
and not a hundredth nor a thousandth part of them have 
been gathered up at all. The words of John are very signifi- 
cant where, using an oriental extravagance and employing 
metaphorical language, he says, ''There are also many things 
which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every 
one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the 
books that should be written." 

It always seemed strange to me, since there was such 
immense fruitfulness of discourse in our Master, that there 
never came to us anything except that which is embalmed 
in the four Gospels. One would think that the intelligent 
philosophers of his day might have caught something, and 
the heathen something, and thus at least single sentences 
would have been handed down to us ; but I have looked 
through all the pseud o and counterfeit gospels of the third 
and fourth centuries, and in other works outside of the 
New Testament, and I have found nothing that looks like 
a possible sentence uttered by our Lord, save one. It seems 
as though this might have been spoken by him. It is re- 
corded in an old book that he was walking along the road 
and saw a man working on Sunday, or on the Sabbath, 
as they would call it, and said, "If thou understandest 
what thou art doing, blessed art thou ; but if thou un- 
derstandest it not, thou art ^accursed." That is to say, 
"If thou hast so large an idea of a man's life as to look upon 
the Sabbath day as his servant, and not his master, and thou 
art working in that broad sphere of intelligence, blessed art 



58 LUMINOUS HOUBS, 

thou, because thou art emaiieipated ; but if thou believest the 
Sabbath day to be a day of bondage and a law over all, and 
in defiance of that art working on it, accursed art thou." 
This sounds very much like the Master. It resembles many 
sayings of his. Besides that, I know not of a single other 
one that is to be found out of the Holy Scriptures. 

How, then, came the Gospels into being ? What is the 
origin of them ? Well, those who heard him went out and 
repeated what they heard. Of course there would be hun- 
dreds of men talking up and down in the villages, and telling 
what they heard him say, and what they saw him do. By and 
by one would distort the truth a little, and another would 
distort it a little more ; and after some twenty years it became 
apparent that there were so many different versions as to 
make it necessary that somebody should give authentic state- 
ments. So Matthew, who companied with Christ, wrote the 
first Gospel ; Luke wrote another ; Mark, another ; and St. 
John the last. It is said that St. John wrote his at the 
request of the elders of Ephesus, in order to include in it 
some teachings that Christ gave, of which the other Gospels 
had nothing. 

On what principle did they construct the Gospels ? Sup- 
pose in a village where there are a dozen officers, intelligent 
men, who went with Sherman on his march to the sea, they 
should come together and talk about that campaign. One 
would tell a story ; that would suggest another which some- 
body else would tell, and that would suggest another. One 
man would say what he saw, another what he saw, and an- 
other what he saw. So it would go round and round the 
circle ; and the whole evening would be spent in that way. 
The principle on which they would relate their separate nar- 
ratives would be association. They would not attempt to 
give a connected history. One man's story would make 
another man think of something that happened five years 
before ; and that would make another man think of some- 
thing that happened two years after. The different narra- 
tives would be thrown together, so far as the time element is 
concerned, in confusion ; and yet every particle would be 
true. 



LUMINOUS HOUBS. 59 

Now, the eyangelists put their accounts together in very 
much the same manner. The Gospels are not constructed in 
any order of time or dates. The facts which are recorded in 
them stand in the order of suggestion and association. One 
is given, and another, and another ; and when you come to 
connect dates with them, you find, perhaps, that a thing 
which happened near the close of the Saviour's life is placed 
at the beginning, and that a thing which took place near the 
beginning of his life is placed toward the close. It is evident 
from the mixed way in which the events stand that there was 
a very loose manner of combining them. This is shown in 
the very first clause of the passage which we read — ' ' About 
eight days after." After what, is not stated. The writer 
had something in his mind which he did not record. 

We have, then, to look into the evangelists more closely 
to see where it was and when it was that the steps were begun 
which led to this grand culmination on the mountain top, 
— this transcendent vision of glory — and what those steps 
were. Our Saviour's whole active ministry probably did not 
overrun fifteen months. The great bulk of his miracles and 
instruction were included in one year. It has generally been 
said that there were three years of his ministry; but the 
active part of those three years did not reach much over one 
year, and according to the best modern scholars did not ex- 
tend beyond fifteen months ; and of this time perhaps all but 
two months — one spent actively in Judaea and one in Per^a — 
was spent in Galilee. 

It was in Galilee that his fame began. What was the 
reason of that fame ? 'The reason of it, when you come to 
trace it back to the very loot, was that he was the most 
perfect Jew that the Jews had ever seen or heard. It is very 
striking to see, in looking through the life of Christ, the 
sentiment of patriotism that he touched. He was a Jew 
after the strictest type. He knew that he was descended 
from the old and revered ancestral Jewish stock. He con- 
formed to the usages of the Jews. He observed the Sabbath 
day. He worshiped in the synagogue. He went to Jeru- 
salem to attend the great feasts. He represented, to the 
common people, in whose hearts the sentiment of patriotism 



60 LUMINOUS HOUBS. 

was the strongest, the perfect Jew. When he began to 
work miracles, they said, ** Another prophet has come." 
The instruction that followed his guileless life ; his wonder- 
workings ; his appeals, not so much to the reason as to the 
moral sentiments ; his kindness and familiarity ; his going 
about and doing good, in contrast with the haughtiness of 
the Pharisees, and with the selfishness that belonged to the 
dominant party at that time in the Jewish economy; his 
sympathy for the poor, the sick, the necessitous of every 
name — these things won the great multitude to him, and 
they regarded him as a prophet in that long line of Jewish 
prophets of whom they were proud, and of whom the whole 
world has become justly proud, because among them have been 
some of the grandest moral natures that ever lived. There 
have been men in history that illumined philosophy, and de- 
veloped power, and achieved military glory ; but nowhere has 
the moral element been more conspicuous than in the Jewish 
nation, of which men nowadays are sometimes so much 
ashamed. The faith of our fathers, their conscience, and 
their hope of immortality, all sprang from that wonderful 
people ; and Jesus seemed to his own countrymen to be the 
most illustrious among them. They felt that their time had 
come. This proud nation, on which the Roman yoke lay, 
and which the Assyrian had trampled into the dust, but 
which inherited the promises of God, longed for emancipa- 
tion ; they looked and waited for it. And, at last, there came 
among them a man, spotless, wise, and of wonderful power 
with God and with men, and he carried the hearts of the 
common people with him, as being the best Jew that ever 
lived in their modern times. When miracle after miracle was 
wrought by him, the Pharisees found fault ; but the common 
people were on, his side ; and all the time they had this latent 
, feeling : " He will very soon disclose himself ; the old banner 
will outroll again, he will draw his sword, the promises shall 
be fulfilled, and no longer shall we be the tail but we shall 
be the head ; all nations shall come and worship at Jerusa- 
lem, and we shall be God's right favored trusty stock ; we 
shall convert the Gentiles, and then the whole earth shall be 
redeemed." So they watched him with great expectation ; 



LUMINOUS HOUBS. 61 

and days and weeks went by, and the blind received their 
sight, and the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf 
heard, the dead were raised, and the poor had the gospel 
preached to them ; and they said, " When will the time 
come — everything is on the way to it, but when will it come — 
that he will declare himself the Messiah ? " 

It was to the north-east shore of the sea of Tiberias, or 
Galilee, that Christ went, not long before the occurrence of 
this scene, to rest. Overborne with the fatigue of instruc- 
tion, he told his disciples to get with him into a ship, or boat, 
and they went thither with him. When the multitudes heard 
that he had gone there they ran around the lake shore, out of 
their cities and villages, to join him. The average distance was 
not above six miles. It was not further than that, even from 
Capernaum. At one point the mountain came down to the 
very sea. Between that and the mouth of the Jordan there 
was a large plain. There it was that the Saviour landed ; and 
it is said that there were some five thousand persons there, 
besides the women and children ; so that there could not 
have been much less than ten thousand people gathered there. 
He rested and taught them all day ; and when evening came 
his heart was filled with compassion toward them on account 
of their hunger — for the Saviour thought of bread-and-but- 
ter as well as of catechism. He thought of men's bodies 
as well as of their souls. He had regard for physical as well 
as for spiritual wants. There were ten thousand people with- 
out food assembled before him at that time, and then it was 
that he performed the miracle of feeding the multitude. 
That was the most undisguised miracle of the whole series. 
There was no deception about it. If you think that a man 
can carry food for ten thousand persons in his pockets, or 
that he can conceal it in the caves of a mountain and sur- 
prise them with it, you are greatly mistaken. There could 
have been no such thing as collusion in this case. Imagine 
how much it would take to feed ten thousand people, so that 
there should be enough, and twelve baskets over. He took 
the five loaves and the two fishes, and multiplied them, and 
multiplied them, until the ten thousand persons, men, women 
and children, were fed, under circumstances that made it 



62 LU^flNOUS HOUBS. 

evident that it must be a diyine power that was at work. 
There was no getting around it. If he had raised a man 
from the dead they might have said, " Oh, he had just fainted 
away;" if he had restored some person that was sick of a 
fever, they might have said, ^' Well, there are doctors that 
can heal the sick by magnetic influence ;" but no man can 
feed ten thousand folks from five loaves and two fishes by 
anything short of superhuman power. It was one of the 
most convincing of miracles ; the people were convinced ; 
and they said, ^^ Indeed, unquestionably, this is our long- 
promised Leader." It is recorded that then they undertook 
to take him by force and make him king. That was the 
point of the highest popular enthusiasm. Then it was that 
the wave broke and overwhelmed them with disappointment, 
for he not only refused to be king, but he determined to de- 
part. The disciples themselves were caught up in the popular 
enthusiasm, and that single sentence is very significant where 
it is said, ^' He constrained [compelled] the disciples to get 
into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side." They 
were so wrought up with the multitude that he was obliged to 
exercise his authority over them, and take hold of Peter, and 
say, '^ Get into that boat," and to push John in, and send 
them off. Having sent them off, he went back to the moun- 
tain to pray. 

What was there in that refusal to be king that should 
damage him ? Any man who is curious of human nature, 
and watches to see how the heart and mind work, knows how, 
in our day, where there is a cause in which men are engaged, 
as for instance the temperance cause, they become enthusi- 
astic, and their leaders eagerly zealous. Let a minister in a 
parish, during a temperance excitement, preach that to ab- 
stain from intoxicating drinks is well, to be sure, but that he 
does not want to sign the pledge ; let him say, ^' I believe 
that every man should be temperate, but I do not think it 
necessary for him to bind himself never to touch a drop of 
liquor," and the foremost reformers will say, " He goes to the 
edge, but he won't go in body and soul and help carry on 
this work ; " and they dislike him more than they do drink- 
ers, and oftentimes more than they do liquor dealers them- 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 63 

selves. Men wlio are conducting a reform want peojDle to 
come in or keep out ; tliey do not want any half-way folks 
connected with them. 

Now, the Jews were full of expectancy ; they thought the 
time was coming nearer and nearer when he was to declare 
himself as their king ; their hearts grew warmer and warmer, 
and their enthusiasm burned higher and higher until the 
climax was reached, — and then he turned away and utterly 
refused to be king ; and when the disciples attempted to per- 
suade him he warned them off, and sent them back into the 
boat, and departed himself to the mountain. The people 
were disappointed in him, and said, " He is a sham ; he is 
a pretender ; he has no heart, no nerve, no bone and muscle ; 
he is nothing;" and that was the end of his popularity. 

You will recollect how, that same night, when the disci- 
ples were on the sea, he came to them walking on the water, 
and quieting the wind which was " contrary unto them." 
And they came ashore and landed at Magdala, a little south 
of Capernaum, on the northwest coast of Galilee. There he 
was met, we are told, by the Pharisees, by the Scribes, and 
by the Herodians. The Pharisees represented the most 
orthodox people among the Jews. The Scribes were their 
teachers, their doctors, their lawyers, the most learned and 
eminent men that they had among them. The Sadducees 
represented the philosophic element. They were not very 
religious, but they made up in ambition what they lacked in 
other respects. At this time the Sadducees were in great 
power ; I think both the high-priests were Sadducees. The 
Herodians represented political ideas and influences of 
the reigning court. So at Magdala Christ met the ortho- 
doxy of the Jews, the scholarship of the Jews, the advanced 
philosophy of the Jews, and the regnant politics of the na- 
tion. Every element of power among the people he found 
waiting for him. And when he undertook to teach them, 
their ears were shut to him on every side. XJnfaith and 
scornfulness confronted him whichever way he turned. He 
found himself rejected everywhere. And he was not spared 
from ridicule. When he spoke of the bread from heaven, 
men said to him, "Why don't you give us that bread?" 



64 LUMINOUS HOUBS. 

Contempt was heaped upon him in every form. He was met 
with the most caustic, bitter, taunting feelings. 

At this place Christ took a ship, with his disciples, and 
sailed up the coast to Bethsaida Julius. He also went to 
Chorazin. Capernaum was likewise visited by him. There 
he was grieved and heart-sick, as he was leaving Galilee for 
the last time. Then it was that he looked wistfully at the 
cities on the hill, where he had spent so much time, and 
said, 

*'Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the 
mighty works T^hich were done in you had "been done in Tyre and 
Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. 
But I say unto you, it shall he more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at 
the day of judgment than for you. And thou, Capernaum, which art 
exalted into heaven shalt be brought down to hell ; for if the mighty 
works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it 
"would have remained until this day." 

Landing at Bethsaida Julius, he heals a blind man, and 
then goes on far north to get out of the way of the rabble, 
and to escape insult. To tell the truth, Jesus was tired ; he 
was worn out — for he had a body, and it behooved him to 
be like his brethren ; his spirits were sucked uj) ; and he 
longed for solitude. So he went to the very bounds of Pales- 
tine, northward to Cesaraea Philippi, called *' the coast [i. e, 
the borders] of Tyre and Sidon." It was in the neighbor- 
hood of these cities ; but he did not go to them, so far as 
we know. He attempted to hide himself ; and he gave in- 
junctions that nobody should be told where he was. 

Here opened the history of the Syrophoenician woman, 
who brought to him her daughter that was possessed ; and it 
was in close connection with this that the Transfiguration took 
place. 

This leads me to say that in the account of his ascending 
the high mountain at evening, no mention is made of the 
place — a circumstance which brings to mind again the singu- 
lar manner in which the Gospels were constructed. Mount 
Tabor, which is to the southwest of Capernaum in Galilee, 
has been said to be the mount of Transfiguration ; but it is 
morally certain that it was not, for the reason that from im- 
memorial it was a hill fortified by a citadel. Joseph us speaks 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 65 

of strengthening its works, so that it must have been a 
place frequented by soldiers and pebple. It is impossible 
that Mount Tabor should have been the scene of the 
Transfiguration. History rather points out that this scene 
occurred on the skirt, or one of the bounds of Mount Her- 
mon — a snow-clad mountain that never lifted the white cap 
from its head. There it was that Jesus went at night with 
Peter, James and John. 

It was a custom of Orientals, as it is now, after wrapping 
their head with a mantle and saying their prayers, to in- 
stantly lie down and fall asleep, (men in the open air sleep 
easily.) At evening our Saviour ascended high up on the 
flanks of Hermon, and these three men were asleep, as they 
were in the garden afterwards ; and Jesus now, as then, 
prayed ; and while he prayed a great change came over his 
appearance. It is said that his face did shine as the sun ; 
and his raiment was white and glistering — exceeding white, 
like the snow. It is not said that he was Hfted up, though 
Raphael, in his picture of the Transfiguration, makes him so ; 
but that he stood wonderfully changed in his whole aspect is 
the sum of the declaration of the Gospels. 

There appeared also Moses and Elias. Why they ? Why 
not angels ? Why not, as at Christ's temptation, and at his 
baptism, personages of celestial origin ? You are to remem- 
ber that the old dispensation was about to cease in power for 
the sake of giving place to the new — that is to say, as the 
blossom falls in order that the fruit may swell under it, and 
be better than the blossom, so the old dispensation was the 
blessed flower of ages from which has come the noblest fruit 
that the world ever saw; it was fit that there should be 
witnesses from the old dispensation ; and there were not two 
names belonging to that dispensation which were more illus- 
trious than those of Moses and Elias, or Elijah — the He- 
brew name is stronger than the Greek. Moses was the 
grandest law-giver, and Elijah was the noblest prophet and 
reformer, of his time. They stood magnificent as the pyra- 
mids of Egypt. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were treasured 
names ; but these men never did or said much that was 
worth remembering. No philosophy, no organization, no 



66 LUMINOUS HOUBS. 

new order in the state, and no development of spirit-life, 
ever sprung from them'. They were simply magnificent pic- 
torial heads and fountains of Jewish stock. They were pious, 
pure, and mildly sagacious. Their nation was proud of them 
as of mythical men. When it came to the matter of national 
gi'owth and reform they were of no account. Moses was the 
greatest man of antiquity ; and I think I may say that even 
in modern times a greater than he has never walked the 
earth. "Wondrous was his career beyond the power of words 
to paint. At forty he began and was cast out ; then he spent 
forty years more in the wilderness as in a school of solitude ; 
and then at eighty, when most men are ready to lay down the 
burden of life, he took it up and commenced the work of 
emancipating and organizing the men of the wilderness. At 
the age of a hundred and twenty years his eye was not 
dimmed, and he left a record which has not died out. There 
never has been a commonwealth, and there never will be one, 
without having the marrow and bone and muscle of Moses 
]Dut into it. Absolutely, his was one of the greatest names 
of the world, and it was unquestionably the greatest name of 
antiquity. 

The name of Elijah was also illustrious. When the king- 
dom seemed about to be destroyed, when Ahab the idol- 
atrous, and Jezebel the. infamous, caused the prophets of God 
to be hunted, then came this man as a flame of lightning and 
a burst of thunder from the wilderness, and undaunted he 
put down the king, and slew the prophets of Baal, and 
restored the kingdom, and exerted such an influence that 
his name to this hour is talismanic in the history of the Jews ; 
so that when they have their Pentecostal feast, or Passover, 
there is always a chair left for Elijah, as with an expectation 
of his coming. 

These two men stood transfigured as the angels of heaven, 
and Christ was transfigured between them. What was the 
theme of their conversation in this august drama ? His 
death, that he should accomplish at Jerusalem. 

When you consider the solitude of the mountain, the cool 
air, and the green grass upon which they were, and the mag- 
nificent background of glacier-capped Hermon ; when you 



I 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 67 

consider that it was niglit, and that the three disciples lay 
sleeping while this magnificent picture was passing before 
them, — a transcendent Gospel before men dead, as it were 
— Y/hen you consider these things, you must feel that this 
was one of the most illustrious spots of the whole history of 
the New Testament. 

Jusi as these figures were disappearing, Peter, James, and 
John awoke ; and they saw the brightness and the glory as 
they were fainting, fainting, fainting and going out in the 
air; and Peter, the impetuous, who always spoke first and 
afterwards thought what he had said, exclaimed, '* Master ! 
let "US stay here forever. Let us build three tabernacles — one 
for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias;" — *'for he 
wist not what he said," as it is recorded ; and he is not the 
only descendant of the apostles who has not known what he 
was talking about, w^hen speaking on snch subjects ! The 
Master adjured them that they should tell no man. 

Then of these figures that were luminous, the two de- 
parted. Christ apparently resumed his natural aspect ; but 
the whole heaven was as one great beaming mass of light ; 
and a vision shone upon them; and out of that cloud as 
from a voice of thunder came the words, *'My beloved 
Son — hear ye him ; " and then the vision departed. 

This doubtless took place between midnight and the 
dawn. When the morning had come, Jesus took his dis- 
ciples and began to talk to them about his approaching 
trial and death. They descended with him from the moun- 
tain ; and when they had reached the base the people saw 
him coming, and were surprised and amazed. It seems that 
he retained something of the appearance which he had on the 
mountain top, and they ran to him. Soon he found his dis- 
ciples in an altercation with the Pharisees. Then occurred a 
scene which was the antithesis of that of the Syrophoenician 
woman. A father met Jesus at the bottom of the mountain, 
and no dramatic literature has anything to be compared with 
that father's petition for his son. Christ healed the son, 
and then he passed on, and went south again. 

Thus far for the external history. Now the question 
arises, in the first place. What was the intent of the Trans- 



68 LUMINOUS HOURS. 

figuration? Why was such a passage of history as this 
developed in the economy of the New Testament ? 

It is a matter profoundly to be grateful for, that our 
Saviour was bodily tired at times ; that he was hungry at 
times ; that he was an outcast at times ; that he had not 
where to lay his head ; that he was homesick. Said he, 
^^The foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but 
I have not where to lay my head." There is nothing in 
literature more touching than the homesickness of Christ. 
He had wrought in his miraculous way and in his teaching 
way, until his spirit and body seemed spent ; he had come to 
the very climax of popularity ; he had been rejected by the 
common people ; and going back to the west side of the lake 
he was disowned by the men of his own nation. He was a 
Jew, and he had the spirit of patriotism which belonged to 
the Jew ; and no man who loves his nation can bear to be 
set aside from it. 

I know that in the old days of the Anti-slavery conflict 
there was nothing that ever pierced my soul more bitterly 
than the thought that I loved this whole land, and was shut 
out from more than half of it. I knew that my heart's 
desire was to have the whole nation prosperous, illustrious, 
grand ; and to know that that longing was met with scorn 
and contempt hurt me. I thought I understood how Christ 
felt when he was rejected by his own people. 

So, spent by labor and worn out by grief of heart, he 
yearned for the wilderness. No man attempts to do great 
things for his time and for his people, that he does not long 
for the wilderness. The more you love men, the more, 
sometimes, it is impossible to endure them ; at times you 
go into the forest, when trees seem more to you than men 
with their selfishness, uncharitableness, and hardness ; and 
it is a comfort to me to know that my Master was homesick 
and worksick, and longed to get into the wilderness, where 
no man could find him. 

He needed more than that. Christ being under human 
conditions, and suffering what humanity suffers, was discour- 
aged ; and 'it was necessary that he should be built up again. 
Therefore he ascended into the divine communion; and it 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 69 

pleased God, by the opening of the heavens, and by those 
messengers of the old dispensation that were adapted to pour 
balm and consolation into his heart who was working for the 
new, to give him re-invigoration. 

man of God, preaching in the wilderness, tired, dis- 
heartened, and accusing yourself of a want of courage and 
faith, your Master was tired, and needed angelic ministration 
to set him up for his work. 

woman in some despoiled neighborhood, bearing the bur- 
den of the household, and longing to do something for the 
school, or for the needy of the neighborhood, unhelped, alone 
and discouraged, and often wishing yourself dead, yon tread 
in the footsteps of Him who once walked the earth, but who 
now reigns in heaven. 

ye that are seeking the world's gain, either in your fam- 
ily or in the community; ye that embrace in your thought and 
ambition the ages and nations, do not be ashamed that yon 
experience hours of deep depression ; for Christ had them, 
and he sanctified them to the good of men. Like him, toOj 
you may have times of luminousness and emancipation. 
On the mountain-top, unexpectedly, in the night, when all is 
darkness, there may come to you the radiancy of a revelation 
from the heavenly land. 

Jesus Christ was walking with his face toward Jerusalem, 
his heavens were fiUed with thnnder-bolts, stroke on stroke 
fell upon him, he was subjected to torment and suffering, 
and he needed, by influences from above, to be armed for 
the next and last scene — that of his forty days' passion. 

More than that, did he not foresee that the events then 
taking place were more than likely to scatter his disciples, to 
frighten and dishearten them, so that he would be quite for- 
saken by them ? He did. 

The Transfignration was meant primarily for his comfort. 
Next, it was meant for the comfort of the apostles. Peter, 
James and John were to go with him to Jerusalem. There 
he was to have a season of conflict with the scholars before 
he went to the peasantry. He was to go among the educated 
Jews, to be put into the hands of wicked men, to be cruci- 
fied, and to be buried out of sight. 



70 LUMINOUS HOUBS. 

You recollect the beaixtiful narratiye given in Luke, 
of the walk to Emmaiis. You remember how bewildered 
they were ; how Christ walked with them unknown to them. 
You have not forgotten how he held their eyes so that 
they could not tell who he was. When they said they had 
hoped that Jesus was he who was to be the deliverer, but that 
he was destroyed, then Christ opened his mouth and taught 
them out of the Scriptures, and showed them how it was 
necessary that the Saviour should be j)ut to death, and rise 
again. That was a very perilous period for the disciples, 
during which their Master was cut off and entombed, and 
when there was nothing for their senses — for their sensuous 
mind — for their bodily sight, and they had not yet learned 
faith; what was it that under such circumstances ' held the 
disciple band together ? 

Do you know that the imagination is a stronger element 
than the reason ? You might suspect it by the fact that 
the Bible employs imagination ten times where it does phil- 
osophy once. 

When old people go back to their childhood, what things 
do they remember most ? Arguments ? Not at all. What 
do you remember about your mother that is gone ? Not any- 
thing by which she was formally made known to the world, 
but some picture, some scene of tenderness, some fragrant 
sentiment which lingers in your imagination. 

What is it of your friends that you remember longest ? 
Not the shape of their eye-brows, or of their face, which was 
drawn as they sat like a wooden dunce having their portrait 
made, but that expression which they had when they came 
to the door and looked in and glanced at you; or which 
flashed over their face when at table some story was told. 
You remember that. You never will forget it. The mem- 
ory of man is kept alive by dreams, by superstitions, or by 
pictures which appeal to the imagination and the fancy. 
These things get a hold upon you which can never be 
lost. 

Now, when the disciples went down to Jerusalem, and 
they saw Christ indefensible, arrested, carried before tribun- 
als, subjected to a mock trial, condemned, dragged forth 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 71 

ignominiously, taunted, lifted upon the cross, in darkness 
and anguish, dying ; when they saw his enemies triumphant 
and exultant, and saw Christ buried, and saw the stone rolled 
up and the tomb sealed, and saw guards placed to watch the 
sepulcher, there was every inducement in the world for them 
to have said to themselves, *' We have been living like a bub- 
ble, and it has burst, — it is ended and gone"; and they 
could not give a reason for thinking it was not gone. There 
was nothing that they could put their hands upon which 
helped their faith ; but they remembered how Christ looked 
when working miracles, when performing deeds of mercy, 
and when standing before them in transfiguration on the top 
of the mountain with the old prophets, and talking with 
them, when the cloud overshadowed them, from which 
the voice addressed them. This wonderful mountain-top pict- 
ure they remembered. Against their reason and their senses 
there was something in their hearts that said, '^We cannot 
give it up"; and they held on till the stone flew back and 
Christ appeared again to their longing, loving vision. 

As, then, the Transfiguration was to comfort the heart of 
Jesus, so it was to prepare the disciples for the tribulation 
which was before them, and to hold them steadfast unto 
the end. 

Christian brethren, there is some instruction to you and 
to me which ought to be drawn out of this beautiful picture. 
To me it has been as a bosom to a child. I have sucked at it 
as a babe at its mother's breast, and have been made stronger, 
healthier, patienter, better, by that which flows to me from 
this heavenly vision of the Transfiguration. 

In the first place, to every one of us, first or last, come 
these luminous hours. I do not believe but that everybody 
has an opening heaven and thoughts that lift him above the 
vulgar present. I believe that everybody has heroic hours, 
generous hours, hours in which the superiority of the true, 
the good, the beautiful, is not any mere speculation, but a 
sensation, I might almost say a conviction. Everybody, I 
think, has his radiant hours of inspiration. But, alas ! most 
men use these hours simply as hours of courtesy, or hours of 
luxury, and they say, ^* Oh, if we could always feel so ! Oh, 



72 LUMINOUS HOUBS. 

if we could always be just as we were at the end of that 
meeting, when the last hymn was sung, and the last stanza 
was rounded out gloriously ! Oh, if we could always be as 
we were at the winding up of such a sermon, that taught and 
inspired us ! Oh, if we could always live in such moods as 
we come into sometimes, alone, in meditation or prayer!" 

But they are transient. Men do not see them perhaps for 
months, and sometimes not for years. They are not concat- 
enated. They do not become our life at all. And transfig- 
uration seven times a week, I think, would become unins- 
tructiye. It is solitariness that makes a thing striking. 
Things that we do over and over again every day are trite 
and make no impression upon us. Those hours of illumina- 
tion which God gives to men are precious hours ; and you 
want to repeat them. You want to build tabernacles and sit 
down in them. Some men's idea of being a Christian is 
to have a good time ; to sing hymns till they feel like 
angels. They want to be on the mountain-top, out of the 
reach of turmoil, while at the bottom of the mountain the 
devil is at work destroying men. They do not want to be in 
the midst of sorrow and suffering, where they will see tears 
and hear groans. They want to enjoy themselves, and let 
the world go. Peter prayed for that; but it was not his 
business, and it is not yours, nor is it mine. Thank God 
for the hours of brightness which come to us, and thank 
God for the hours that must come to us, one after another, 
of bui'dens and troubles. Being a Christian does not take 
you out of life, nor redeem you from the laws of this world, 
or from social disturbances, or from political exigencies. 
We are workers together with God, where tears fall, where 
breaking hearts are, and where sorrows gush like springs 
from mountains. Here is where we live, and where we should 
be ; and if we are occasionally taken into those higher expe- 
riences, let us bless God for them, and use them to strengthen 
ourselves for lower ones. Many and many a man is working 
out his salvation better in tears and under burdens than 
when he seems to himself an angel about to fly to the king- 
dom of glory. It is not when you feel best that you are best, 
but when you suffer most and most patiently under trials and 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 73 

misfortunes. Not when God is lifting men up, but when he 
is pressing them down, is he blessing them most. 

Not when he rides into the city after a victory is the 
general most noble, but when he is in the wilderness, and 
everything is dark and lowering, and by his courage and 
indomitable perseverance he overcomes obstacles. It is when 
a man rises above his circumstances and moods that true 
manhood shows itself in him. It is then that he is grandest 
and nearest to God. 

There is another thing. As the Transfiguration on the 
mount was designed to teach the disciples how to conduct 
themselves when the exigencies which were to come upon 
them should be developed, so these luminous hours which 
come to all men ought to be used by them to determine their 
duties and courses. ^* What shall a man do ?" is a question 
that is occurring every single day ; and what a man shall do 
win be settled by a higher or lower court. The lower court 
of man's nature, where pride and selfishness and avarice and 
vanity reside, almost always settles questions, and it almost 
always settles them wrong. What is generous ? Is it best to 
act generously ? What is liberal ? How much ought a man 
to be liberal ? What is self-sacrifice ? How far ought a man 
in justice to himself and his family to be self-sacrificing ? — 
these questions are generally settled by the lower court of the 
human mind. It says, '^ Take care of yourself : if every 
man would take care of one, the whole world would be taken 
care of." A man's first impulse, if he be a man, is to do the 
best, the noblest, the ripest thing; but he says, ''Let me 
take a second thought"; and that second thought always 
lowers the tone of his manliness. 

A man says, '' I thought I would give fifty dollars ; but I 
think I will give only twenty-five." He thinks again, and 
says, " There are so many people here that I don't believe I 
need to give more than ten dollars." Before the box comes 
round he thinks again ; and he does not give more than a 
dollar. In those hours when your best nature is in the 
ascendency ; when the reason is calm and the moral feelings 
are alive ; when you are impelled by motives from the side 
furthest awav from the beast — then is the best time to settle 



74 LUMINOUS HOURS. 

questions of doubt and procedure. In your best hours take 
your highest thoughts, and follow them. 

Some of you, in many hours, doubt whether there is any 
God. Some of you doubt whether there is any yalidity in 
the Bible. Some of you doubt whether there is any good 
except as circumstances favor. Those doubts and skepti- 
cisms every man, whose mind is active, and who is observing, 
has, more or less, in his lower hours ; and they dampen and 
hinder him ; but at other times he looks beyond the expanse 
of this life, and over the horizon, and he has a sense of the 
certainty and nearness of God ; and his whole soul adjudi- 
cates. The7i it is that he should take his reckoning, fix his 
landmarks and steer by them. 

"When a man goes over the Alleghanies, or any untrodden 
mountain, on some hill-top he looks forward and sees how the 
whole land lies ; and he singles out some vast rock, some tall 
pine, or some prominent point, as a land mark ; then he 
goes down into the champaign, and the way is no longer open 
like a map before him. He is lost ; but still he keeps the 
general direction ; and by and by, through a little opening, 
he sees yonder rock or pine or point; and he says, ^' Ah ! 
that is what I saw," and travels on, and emerges again. 
Pretty soon he disappears again in the valley, but keeping the 
direction, he soon rises again so that his landmark comes into 
view once more. 

It is when you are on the mountain-top that you should 
take your landmarks and steer toward them, and when you 
go down and lose sight of them, keep straight across the 
valley until you rise so that they greet your vision again. 
Not when you are in the valley can you tell which way to 
travel, unless you have learned it on the top of the hill. 

One single other thing. After all the beauty and sub- 
limity of this wonderful miracle wrought upon the person of 
Jesus Christ, and after all the instruction connected with it, 
it still comes back to me in the light of the apostle's joyful 
yet sad utterance, '^ ISTow we see through a glass, darkly ; but 
then face to face." We are all of us ignorant ; we know in 
part ; we are partialists ; nobody knows a great deal ; but the 
time is drawing near. Christian brethren, when neither upon 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 75 

this mountain, nor at Jerusalem, nor upon Mount Hermon, 
nor upon any earth-summit, shall we need to receiye instruc- 
tion, or have any luminous hours, or pass through this or 
that experience ; but when we shall stand in Zion and before 
God, and shall see him as he is, and shall be like him, and 
shall rejoice with him forever and forever. 

May God so incline your hearts to wisdom, your souls to 
love, and your lives to faith and to a holy obedience, that 
when, brighter a thousand times than the Mount of Trans- 
figuration, the vision of God shall rise upon you in the other 
life, your eye shall not blench, and your heart shall not be 
daunted. 

He it is for whom I have waited. This is He for whom 
my soul has longed. I have traveled through time, and twi- 
light, and midnight, and sorrow ; but I behold Him, and it 
is enough. The blessing is begun^ and it shall end ne7er. 



76 LUMINOUS HOURS. 



PRAYEE BEFORE THE SERMON. 

We bless thee, our Father, for the clear light of truth, dawning 
in the early day, and gathering strength with the ages. It shines 
brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. Forgive us that we have 
so much light, and yet go stumbling along the way of life. Forgive 
us that we, standing under the influences of two worlds, are scarcely 
able to know and understand the laws of one, and obey them. We 
acknowledge our weakness ; the sense of our sinfulness is always with 
us ; but thou art gracious. . Thou dwellest in love unspeakable. We 
build with selfishness and pride. We, creatures of the dust, and 
ruled by material influences, hardly yet understand, even in our 
choicest experiences, what are the greatness, and the wisdom, and 
the power and the discipline of divine love. We rejoice that thy 
government is established thereupon. We rejoice that God is love, 
and that yet he will control the universe so that all things shall work 
together for good, and that tears shall be wiped away, and groans 
shall cease, and sorrows shall roll their ceaseless waves no more for 
ever, and that there shall be no more hurting, and no more sickness, 
and no more crying, and no more death. How far away this land of 
vision is we know not; through how many ages yet the world must 
travail in pain we do not know; but it is a joy to our heart to believe 
that this radiant future is the consummation, and that toward it all 
things are steering. Whatever may be the mischances, whatever 
may be the interruptions and hindrances, however long the term 
may be, yet there shall come a day when all things shall be gathered 
up, and when to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ every knee shall 
bow, and every tongue confess, of things in heaven and things on 
earth, to the glory of God the Father. And we rejoice that when the 
end shall conje, he will deliver up the authority, and God will be 
supreme, all in all. Our reason cannot follow. Our imagination 
staggers. What the radiant glory of that far-off development and 
perf ectness of being shall be we cannot tell ; but we hope, and fash- 
ion to ourselves in a thousand effervescent ways, and by a thousand 
pictures that come and go, the blessedness of that estate in which we 
shall dwell with God. 

May the light of hope cheer us. May there fall down from heaven 
upon our souls, to-day, some brightness and joy that shall enable us 
to be stronger, more courageous and hopeful, and better able to 
endure unto the end. 

Especially we beseech of thee, draw near to thy servants that are 
gathered together here this morning, and surprise those that have 
come not knowing why they came, and cheer those that have come 
hoping to meet thee. Lift the light of thy countenance upon those 
who dare not raise their eyes unto thee, being children of sorrow, 
bound fast and hopeless, if such there be. 

Grant, O Lord, that thy light may come to those who sit in ttie 
valley and shadow of death. Make thyself again, as on earth thou 
didst declare thyself to be, the opener of prison-doors ; the breaker 
of bands and shackles ; the emancipator, leading forth those who are 



LUMINOUS HOURS. 77 

bound in dungeons. Give release to consciences that are bound and 
imprisoned. Give release to those who are endungeoned by doubts, 
and to those who are hopeless by reason of outward troubles. Break 
the yoke that is oppressive, and put upon the neck the yoke that is 
light and easy. 

Grant, we beseech of thee, that Jesus Christ may be known to all 
who are here to-day, as the great presentation of God ; as the helpful 
and suffering Father; as the one who bears the burdens of the uni- 
verse, and carries all things in his arms toward universal victory. 
Grant that we may have rising upon our thoughts to-day a concep- 
tion of the Healer, the Sun of Righteousness, that every one of us 
may be able to come under his wings, and be brooded of God. 

We pray that thou wilt bless the little ones— the children that are 
growing up. May God guide them to honor, and fidelity, and true 
manliness and piety. We pray that their parents may both set a 
godly example before them, and know how to train them, as well as 
to teach them. 

Bless, we pray thee, the families that are gathered together. 
Search out all their needs. Help every one of them to trust in God, 
and to bring that trust to bear on the affairs of life. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt go with our thoughts every- 
where to-day as we remember those who are left behind, and those 
who have gone forth upon the great sea, and those who are scattered 
abroad throughout the continent. Will the Lord bless abundantly 
those who are absent from us. Thy heart is larger and warmer than 
ours. Take the measure of thy benefaction, not from our thinkings, 
but from thine own nature; and overflow the souls not only of those 
present, but of those absent ones who are dear to us. 

We beseech of thee that thou wilt bless this neighborhooa, and all 
the region around about. Bless all this great congregation in their 
gathering together this day to worship God. We beseech of thee 
that in the stillness and sweetness of this mountain retreat, the pres- 
ence of that God who spoke from Mount Sinai and from Mount Cal- 
vary may be felt. May this be a Sabbath of calmness and peace in 
the souls of multitudes. 

May a blessings accompany those who go hence. Grant that all 
the villages and neighborhoods may be visited by thy salvation. 

Be pleased, O God, to remember our whole land, and all classes 
and conditions that are in it. Remember those who are spoiled and 
broken up m life, and are dying of despondency. Remember those 
who are outcast in ignorance, and know not how to conduct their 
lives well. We ask thy mercy for all those who are seeking knowl- 
edge, discouraged, in twilight, but who yet are looking toward the 
East for the dawning of intelligence. 

Grant, we beseech of thee, thy blessing upon the States of this 
Union. May all those bonds that have been broken be reunited more 
firmly than ever. May all causes of offense, and dislike, and hatred 
be purged away, and may justice, and love, and reciprocal interests, 
and common patriotism, and longing for the welfare of the world 
around about us and lying in wickedness, be ushered in. Unite us 
inseparably that the nation may, following the example of the Lord 



78 LUMINOUS HOURS. 

Jesus Christ, use its power, not for the despoiling of the poor and the 
weak, but rather for their building up on every hand. 

Bless the President of these United States, and all who are joined 
with him in authority. Bless all the Governors of the several States 
of this nation, all judges and magistrates, and the great people. 
And grant that thy kingdom may come, and thy will be done, in this 
land as in heaven. 

These mercies we ask through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen. 



I <^> ■ 



PRAYER AFTER THE SERMON. 

OuB Father, bless to us the truth which we have spoken. Bless to 
us the scenes that are recorded in thy holy word. Grant that we 
who interpret that word so poorly may discern more fruit and 
instruction in it than we have been wont to think it contained. May 
we learn more and more easily from it. Yet, may it not supersede 
the experiences of our lives, nor the revelations that thou art mak- 
ing to every person in his family, and in all his way and work. 
Bless thy word to those who are impatient of the disciplines and 
trials of thy providence, and to those whose hearts are set against 
the truth. Bless all thy servants in the varied lines of their duty. 
And bring us, with all whom thou lovest upon the earth— oh, bring 
us, ransomed and redeemed, into the kingdom of thy heavenly glory. 
And we will give the praise to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, 
evermore. Amen. 



IV. 

Law ae"d Libeett. 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 



"For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not 
liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another. 
For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: Thou shalt love 
thy neighbor as thyself. But if ye bite and devour one another, take 
heed that ye be not consumed one of another. This I say then. Walk 
in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh. For the 
flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; and 
these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the 
things that ye would. But if ye be led by the Spirit, ye are not un- 
der the law."— Gal. v., 13-18. 



Of all the writers whose words are recorded in the Bible, 
there was no one whose spirit so perfectly accorded, on 
the whole, with the modern spirit, and the spirit which pre- 
vails in America, as Paul's. There was no one who had such 
a profound sense of individualism, of the right of the indi- 
vidual, or of the object of religion — namely, to build up in 
each particular- person a manhood that should be large, 
strong, rich, and perfectly free. There was no one of them 
that spoke so much about liberty — a sound peculiarly pleas- 
ant to our ears — as the Apostle Paul ; and he declares that 
we are called to it ; that it is the very thing in religion to 
which we are called. Now, there is an apprehension, very 
wide-spread — and we can see how reasonably it has sprung 
up — that religion, so far from making men free, hampers 
them, restricts them, ties them up, burdens them ; and there 
is among men a universal impression, when life is strong in 
young veins, and the impulse to do just as they wish to is power- 

Preaclied at the Twin Mountain Hottse, White Mountains, N, H., Sunday morn- 
ing, Sept. 13th, 1874. Lesson : Luke ix., 28-42. Hymns (Plymouth Collection) : Nos. 31, 
n66, " Doxology." 



82 LAW AND LIBERTY. 

ful, that they do not want to be religious. The fact is that 
they want to enjoy themselves a little while. 

They have a superabundance of hilarity^ and a strong im- 
pulse toward enjoyment; and they think it will be time to be 
still and careful when the world is not so stimulating ; 
they say, ** When we are old enough to have the rheumatism, 
why, then we won't race and dance ; when we don't want to 
laugh, why, then we'll be sober ; and when we can't do 
anything else, then we'll get ready to die; but as long as 
we have vigor and vitality and sunlight and all sorts of 
pleasures, why, we're going to have a good time. We'll take 
the bad time when we can't help it." On the other hand, 
there are many persons — persons that are anxious about their 
children, and trying to bring them up well ; people that take 
on the duty of instructing the community, and feel them- 
selves responsible for what their fellow-men believe and what 
they do ; folks that are trying to form and employ public 
sentiment — there are many such persons who are astonished 
when we say that religion is the freest of all things, that men 
who have once become converted and are truly Christians are 
no longer under the law, and that a typical Christian, one 
who is a type of what religion really should be, is a person 
that does just what he has a mind to. '* A person that does 
what he has a mind to, a Christian ? " say they : " why, it is con- 
trary to the whole face of Scripture, which says that you 
must deny yourself ; that you must take up your cross ; that 
there must be a yoke and a burden. To preach that when a 
man becomes a true Christian he may do just what he has a 
mind to is flagitious, and will lead to licentiousness and all 
manner of self-indulgence." Historical developments are 
pointed to by men, of what are called ^' Antinomians," whom 
Christians have regarded as claiming to be raised to such a 
state that there was no more law for them, so that whenever 
they wanted to do a thing their doing it made the act right 
in their own estimation — the grace of God being given them 
to make them worse rather than better. Conservators of 
purity and religion are very much afraid of this doctrine of 
liberty, because they think it will break the bands of re- 
sponsibility, and destroy the power of conscience upon men. 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 83 

Now, Paul insists upon it that we are bora to liberty, that 
we are called to liberty, and that the true typical Christian 
experience is one that takes away the power of the law over 
us, and gives us freedom to do what we want to do. Other 
inspired writers, and James among them, enjoin upon us the 
law of liberty, and exhort us to continue faithful therein, 
declaring that they are not unfruitful who do this. James 
says : 

" Whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth 
therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this 
man shall be blessed in his deed." 

Men who are under the divine inspiration exhort us to 
liberty. How could this be if it were as jBiagitious in its 
results as men claim that it is ? Let us look into this matter 
a little. 

What is liberty ? In the first place, the way in which 
men haye learned to consider liberty has come from their 
experience in being oppressed by each other, and in emanci- 
pating themselves from the domination of a neighbor or a 
ruler. Breaking away from him has seemed to them io be 
liberty. In other words, the notion of being at liberty to do 
what you want to is intimately associated with the act of 
throwing off law and throwing off government. Men do not 
discriminate between the process by which one comes to a 
state of liberty and the essential element of that state. 

In regard to civil liberty, we are very proud of having had 
the war of Independence. We broke away from Great Brit- 
ain, and became masters of ourselves, and made our own 
laws, and elected our own ofiBcers ; and as a nation we could 
do what we pleased without asking anybody's consent ; and 
from these various historical developments of the power of 
liberty, men have come to hold the idea that liberty means 
ignoring authority and setting aside controlling laws. 

Now, by your leave, I will say that no man is free until 
he is absolutely in bondage. No man is free until he is so in 
bondage that he does not know that he is in bondage. No 
man has true liberty until he has been so subdued that he 
accepts the control that is over him, and makes it his own, 
and ceases to be able to discriminate between his individual 



84 i^TF AND LIBERTY, 

will and the law which, is exterior to him. I think there will 
be no doubt about this matter if you will trace it step by 
step, and see how men are developed. 

Consider, first, how men become, in their material and 
physical relations, large, strong, facile, and successful. When 
the child is born, and begins to learn the qualities of matter 
and the use of itself — of its feet, of its hands, of its eyes, 
and of its ears — what is the process by which we undertake 
to develop him out of weakness into strength ? We teach 
him the knowledge of matter ; we teach him what are the 
laws, as we say, of matter; and we teach him strictly to 
observe those laws. At first the child does not know the 
difference between cutting edges and blunt edges ; but he 
learns it ; and he learns how to accommodate himself to those 
qualities or natures. He does not know the difference be- 
tween fire and ice, nor does he know the difference between 
water to be plunged into and the air to be breathed. He 
learns the peculiarities of these substances and their laws. 
No child has learned to go alone, to use his hands, and to 
have •the comfort of his eye, of his ear, or of his mouth, 
until he has learned what are the laws to which these various 
organs must conform themselves ; and learning on the part of 
the child is obeying ; and obeying is coming to more of him- 
self. Having his way by refusing law would be never to walk, 
never to use his hands, never to look, never to hear, never to 
taste, never to do anything except to have his own way, which 
would be to be an everlasting cipher or zero. Every step by 
which every child comes to be less and less a child and more 
and more of a man, every step by which he finds out more 
laws, on every side of him, in the air above, on the earth 
beneath, among men, in the infinite variety of the affairs of 
human life, is a step of obedience to law. He learns what 
laws are, and how to yield to them, and how to apply them ; 
and he grows by compliance with them and obedience to 
them. 

Follow it up a little. We educate ourselves either for 
pleasure or for accomplishment. How is it that one learns 
to become a pianist? By sitting down, and saying, ''1 am 
going to have my own way about this matter" — or, by 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 85 

finding out exactly what is required by the law of sound 
and by the law of instrumentation, and saying to the hand, 
^'You have got to come to it: you don't hke it, but you 
must come to it"; and twisting and turning, and twist- 
ing and turning it, and training and drilling, training and 
drilling it, through months and years? It will take a 
long time to subdue that hand to the nature of the instru- 
ment. It is going to control the instrument by-and-by ; but 
it will control the instrument by-and-by because it has been 
a bond-slave to it. He who, having accepted the bondage of 
the instrument, drills his hand till it has become perfectly 
obedient to it, transfers to his hand all the virtue of that 
instrument. 

The man who undertakes to play billiards must submit 
to law, and be led by it, until he has learned how to handle 
the cue, and how to strike the balls and make them rebound 
and affect each other. He cannot say, *^I will do as I please 
here," until he is able to do just what the bilhard table 
requires. When he has submitted himself to the nature of 
the game, and mastered its requirements, then he can say, 
^^I will do as I have a mind to," because he is inclined to do 
what the laws of billiard playing demand. 

So it is in regard to every single act of this sort — riding, 
fencing, dancing, rolling ten-pins, plowing, or cutting wood. 
In each of these instances the first step is the subjugation of 
yourself by obedience to the law ; and the second, when you 
have obeyed it perfectly, is unconscious, automatic action. 
When you have reached this point you have perfect liberty — 
the power to go or to stop ; to do or not to do ; to accomplish 
in one way or in another. A man becomes large, facile, inge- 
nious, accomphshing, in the proportion in which he has sub- 
jugated, by apprenticeship, every muscle, every nerve, every 
power, every element of his being, to the laws under wJiich 
it acts. This denying of himself, this taking up his cross, in 
regard to all the specialties of life ; this dying to himself and 
living in the laws that are around about him, gives him back 
to himself strong, wise, facile ; and he becomes free in the 
proportion in which he has submitted himself to perfect 
training and drill. 



86 LAW AND LIBERTY. 

That which is true in respect to the body is as true in 
respect to the social conditions of life. A man says, ' ' I am 
born free and equal with all the world ^' ; and in one sense all 
men are born free and equal. Men are said to be equal in 

our political bible ; and politically men have equal rightS' 

that is, they alike haye the right to obey the laws, and to 
reap the fruits of obedience ; and they have an equal right if 
they disobey the laws to be punished for it. The highest has 
an equal right to be punished with the lowest. In the eyes 
of the Government men are equal as citizens ; they are equal 
before the law ; but they are equal in no other sense. They 
are not equal in noses, nor in eyes, nor in ears, nor in any 
sense other than simply that of their fundamental political 
rights, which are, comparatively speaking, artificial and 
remote. 

A man says, *'I am born free, and am as good as any- 
body." It depends entirely upon who that anyhody is. He 
says, "I do not believe in the laws of society, and I am 
going to do as I please. " In that coarse sense he goes out 
into the community, and every single person is his enemy. A 
rude, vulgar man who goes into civilized society will find that 
all those among whom he moves are of necessity his antago- 
nists ; and he will be expelled from that society. A man 
who would move and thrive in the midst of refined and culti- 
vated people must become acquainted with social laws, and 
must comply with them. When he begins to comply with 
them it is awkward for him. It is awkward for a man to 
come into a room gracefully when he has not learned the 
postures of polite society. He does not know what to do 
with his arms, nor how to stand or sit. What is an awkward 
man but a man who has not learned the laws of civility in 
the social relations of men to each other ? There are such 
laws, although they are not written in a book. They are not 
penal laws, but they are laws which are just as real as though 
there was a penalty attached to them. The laws which gov- 
ern one man in his intercourse with another 'in life are as real 
as those laws which govern the stellar universe. Every man 
who becomes facile and easy and natural in his relations to 
society becomes so because he has learned and complied 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 87 

with the conditions which are imposed upon liim by society 
laws. It is by obedience that he comes to be free to do what 
he jileases. He is free to do what he pleases simply because 
he has learned how to please to do the things that are right, 
but on no other conditions. 

That which is true in respect to social relations is as true 
in respect to ciyil relations. Who is the free man in society ? 
Is it the counterfeiter, who watches with suspicion every man 
that knows him, and. who is conscious that the whole armed 
force of society has been put, by his act, in battle array 
against him ? The murderer, the thief, the gambler, has 
set at defiance the laws of society ; and is he free ? The 
man who is hunted, who is circumscribed, who is always in 
danger, and who has to create a circle for himself in order to 
exist at all, because society is his natural adyersary — is he 
free ? No. The man who is the most intelligent, and has 
the most perfect knowledge of the laws of the community, 
and believes them to be right, and so thoroughly obeys them 
that he does not know that he obeys them ; the man who 
obeys laws and does not know it except when he begins — he 
is free. 

When I am driving it does not occur to me that I am obey- 
ing any law. I turn to the right on the turnpike to avoid a 
stage that is likely to be run into by me, not because I think 
of the law that requires me to do so. I do it unconsciously. 
I do not go through the process of thinking, ' ' I will turn 
out because I am required to by law." And after I have done 
it I do not think of it. When I bow to a man, I do it with- 
out thinking of it, and I do not treasure up the fact, and 
tell my wife about it when I go home. Having done it, I do 
not know that I did it. I speak kindly to a child, and give 
it sympathy, not because there is any law that says I must, 
(although there is such a law), but because when the law 
first said so to me I obeyed it so implicitly that I have for- 
gotten it now. I perform the deed, not because public senti- 
ment or law says, " Do it," but because I have been so drilled 
into it that I do it without law. The law says, ^' Thou 
shalt not steal ; " but that is not why I refrain from steal- 
ing. The law does not permit me to do it; but if it did 



88 LAW AND LIBEBTY. 

I would n't. And now I do of myself that wliicli the law 
once obliged me to do because I was so low and base and un- 
deyeloped that I needed something to show me what the best 
things were. I followed the law, I obeyed it, and finally I 
came to see, by my higher intelligence, what it was to be 
a true man ; and this is the way to come to power and free- 
dom. 

That which is true in regard to social relations and civil 
matters is true in respect to political affairs. A man may be 
free under a despotism. That is to say, let the Czar of Eus- 
sia issue his decrees so that every man knows just what he 
wants him to do, and let his subjects obey because they really 
believe theirs is the best government, and under it they 
become free. If they were always resisting it they would 
always be hedged in, hindered, restricted, bound ; but by 
accepting it, though it be an imperfect administration, they 
become free in proportion as they conform to it, or in propor- 
tion as they run with those who are in sovereign power over 
them. In every government the man who accepts the law is 
the freest. The man who knows how to conform to the laws 
of commerce is freer than the man who does not know how 
to conform to them — for there are laws of commerce as much 
as there are laws of taste, laws of good manners, or any 
other laws that apply to the individual. 

When a man first goes into business, he does not under- 
stand the laws which govern it, and we do not trust him with 
much liberty or scope. Why ? Because he has not been 
trained to obedience to the inevitable and compulsory laws 
of commerce. When he has learned them, and is expert in 
them, and yields to them, and obeys them, we say of him, 
*^He can go alone now." He has tied himself to those laws, 
and he has gone with them until they are incorporated into 
him and he into them ; and he is free so far as he follows 
them ; but if he resists them they restrict his liberty, and 
punish him. 

So, liberty does not mean throwing off law: it means 
taking it on. Liberty does not mean opposing government : 
it means the most absolute submission to government, pro- 
vided it is a right government, conformable to our bodily 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 89 

structure, our social make-up, our intellectual qualities, and 
our moral nature. He is freest who submits to the most 
laws, and submits to them the most impHcity. No man gets 
possession of himself until he has gone through this process. 
The trouble and curse of daily hfe in every direction is the 
want of that uuconscious or automatic action which is the 
result of training in laws and principles and obedience to 
them. Great mischief has come from men's imperfect know- 
ledge of laws, and the imperfect manner in which they have 
submitted to them. 

That which is true in respect to all our external relations 
you will find to be true in respect to our higher relations, or 
in respect to what is called, in distinction from our education 
in business, the education of our thoughts, our intellectual 
development, our philosophical elevation, our cultivation and 
refinement. In other words,' when men are set to develop 
their mental faculties, they learn in just the same way that 
they do when they undertake to educate their muscles or 
their organs. 

No man can learn to read except in one way. He cannot 
walk into a spelling-book and say, *' I want r to have the 
force of t, and it shall." He must call r, r, and must give 
it the sound which custom gives it. M must be m to him, 
and b must be b to him. He must give to every letter in 
the alphabet the name and sound which belong to it. When 
a man begins to read he cannot say, "I will spell phthisic, 
t-i-s-i-c." Custom is law, and he is obliged to spell the word 
the other way — though I should not dare venture to tell you 
how! No man learns so simple a matter as reading or writ- 
ing except by submitting himself to foregoing rules and reg- 
ulations. Well, when a man begins to learn to read, he is 
exactly like folks who are just converted. " N-o, no ; 
m-a-n, man ; m-a-y, may ; b-u-t, but ; o-ff, off ; t-h-e, 
the." Has the man who spells out his words thus learned 
to read ? No. Why ? Because he has to think of each 
letter in a word before he puts the letters together and pro- 
nounces the word. Do I do it ? Do you do it ? We do 
not. Why do we not ? Because we have become so used to 
reading that our eye never sees a single letter in a word, nor 



90 LAW AND LIBERTY. 

a single word in a sentence. Indeed, we are not conscious of 
sentences even : we are only conscious of the ideas which 
are expressed by the sentences. Our minds are so drilled 
that we take in only the event or thing described by these 
symbols on paper. We see the history itself, the person him- 
self, the occurrence itself ; and the drama goes on before us 
as though we were looking through a glass at an actual 
picture. 

Now, how do we come to that facility of reading ? By 
familiarizing ourselves with instruments or letters until they 
become our servants, as we first become theirs. We bow 
ourselves down to these crooked symbols ; and then we be- 
come so absolutely absorbed by them, in obedience to them, 
that they vanish and leave their power and effect in us as a 
part of our own personality. 

The result is what we call "habit." Habit in the popu- 
lar mind consists merely in doing things easily because we 
have become used to doing them ; but it is more : it is really 
the augmentation of faculty. It is a new power which a 
man has gained by the repetition of acts until he has per- 
fected himself in a given direction. It exalts him. It brings 
him upon a higher plane of cerebral power or capacity. 

It may be said that no man knows a thing perfectly until 
it has become so much a part of himself that his knowledge 
of it and his use of it cease to be matters of conscious- 
ness. We cease to be conscious of the force of letters in 
a sentence, and yet we read ; and just in proportion as we 
lose the consciousness of the letter-form we become perfect 
in the art of reading. No man knows how to walk well who 
thinks just how he is going to take every step. What is the 
trouble with awkward people when they go into company ? 
Nobody is so graceful in things that belong to the farm as 
the farmer. If you bring him to Boston and ask him to go 
into conditions that he is not accustomed to, he is awkward ; 
and the well-dressed, kid-gloved young man kughs to see 
how the poor old fellow acts ; but now, take our young man 
and put him behind the plow, and see how he will act ! He 
is as awkward there as the old man was in the city. But put 
the farmer behind the plow, and see the elasticity with which 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 91 

he adapts himself to its moyements. He observes what is 
coming, and prepares for it, and goes along with the utmost 
ease and composure. Where a man has had education and 
drill in the thing to which he is appointed, and does it un- 
consciously and automatically, according to its kind, it is 
noble and beautiful. 

When buildings are being constructed I sometimes am 
tempted to go up and see what they are, how they are made ; 
and I observe that the first story I get up the ladder well 
enough ; that the second story I hold a little tighte-r to the 
rounds ; that the third story I lie flat against the ladder ; 
that the fourth and fifth stories I tremble, and crawl like a 
worm ; and that when I get to the top I very carefully place 
my foot on the gutter, or stej) on the platform, and scarcely 
dare look around; but I see the workmen — men that are not 
a bit smarter than I am — run up the ladder, step all over the 
roof, go everywhere, without stopping to look where they 
tread, climb a rafter, put two sticks together, and spring to 
the top of them, light as a bird, nimble as a squirrel, and 
sure-footed as a spider ; and as I look at them I envy them. 
But I go up to-morrow, and find that I have a little more 
confidence, and am not quite so dizzy-headed. I go up the 
next day, and the next, and the next. The result is that by 
and by I can go up just as well as they can, and just as 
quick, and can do it without thinking what I am doing. 

I remember that in Indianapolis I had a house built. I 
wanted to economize in every way I could, and meant to 
paint it myself ; and I did. I got along well enough until I 
came to the gable end, which was two and a haK stories 
high. When I began to paint there I was so afraid that I 
should fall off from the platform that I nearly rubbed out 
with my vest what I put on with the brush ; but in the course 
of a week I got so used to climbing that I was as nimble as 
any painter in town. 

No man has learned a lesson who thinks of it at all as a 
lesson. No man has learned a trade who has to stop and say, 
'' How ought I to guide my hand ?^' 

A man begins to set type in a printing ofiice. Here is a 
composing stick, and here is a case of letters. He is told to 



92 LAW AND LIBERTY. 

set up, '^ All men are born free and equal," and he says to 
himself, " A. Where is A ?" He looks for A, and finds it, 
feels of it and turns it over to get it in the right position. 
Then he says, ** Double 1," and he hunts for 1 ; by and by he^ 
gets it, and puts it in the stick. At length he gets the first 
word set up ; and finally the other words. But that man is 
not a printer, although he manages to set up *• All men are 
free and equal." Go into the office of one of our dailies, and 
see a compositor set type there. He handles the letters so 
quick that your eye cannot follow them. His hand knows 
all about the case ; it knows just where to find every letter ; 
and no sooner does it touch the type than the type tells him 
which side up it is to go, without his thiuking. 

No person has learned anything so as to be perfect in it 
till he can do it without knowing it. When a man can do a 
thing without thinking of it, he has come to a state of lib- 
erty so far as that thing is concerned. He is in bondage to 
his notes who is obliged to think of his notes ; he is in bond- 
age to the piano who is obliged to think of the piano ; but 
he is free who does not think of note or piano, and yet swells 
the strain and rolls off the symphony. He has subdued the 
music and the instrument; and now he may do what he 
pleases with them. He could only have done it, however, by 
going through what their laws required him to do, which 
lifted him to the capacity of doing. 

All government in the family, all methods of civil govern- 
ment, all institutions of education and religion, ought to set 
this ideal before themselves. There is a great deal of gov- 
ernment in the family that is mistaken. I have sometimes 
heard people say, ^^ How poorly those boys have turned out ! 
It is strange, too, because there never were boys more strictly 
brought up. To my certain knowledge, they used to be 
whipped once a week !" Yes, they were watched ; they were 
kept out of evil ; they were carefully instructed ; and when 
they were of age, and went out of the family, they plunged 
into every liberty and every license, and proved themselves 
fallible and imperfect in every way. They learned a great 
many things in the family, but they never learned how to 
govern themselves. There are a great many fathers and 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 93 

mothers whose nature is to govern. The spirit of autocracy 
and monarchy is in them. They do not govern their children 
to teach those children to govern themselves, but they govern 
them for the sake of governing them ; and they keep it up ; 
and the children never learn self-government. Now, the 
object of governing a child is to get rid of the necessity of 
governing him. It is to teach him the use of his own facul- 
ties with regard to the great laws which are fundamental to 
you and him in common. If you bring up your children 
with a liberty which has restriction enough to make them 
obey the law, and with an amount of government which 
makes them independent and self-reliant, you will do that 
which is best for them. They will make blunders ; but they 
will learn. They will fall into mistakes ; but those mistakes 
will be a part of their training. You can bring up a child so 
that he is all compliance toward externality ; but he will have 
no power in himself ; and what will he be good for ? He will 
be like dough, and wiU never amount to anything. These 
round, smooth folks, that come up so carefully, and that wiU 
roll in all ways with equal facihty, and are of no particular 
account, serving as mere punctuation points to keep other 
folks apart, have not been well developed, or taught, or bred. 

Power of knowledge, obedience, training until it becomes 
unconscious and automatic, is the end that is sought by the 
whole drift of divine government, as indicated by nature and 
revealed by the Gospel. It is not meant that we should go 
through this life acting as if the world were a life-boat, to be 
used merely for snatching as many folks from destruction as 
possible, and for taking them safely to heaven. This world 
is God's university or school, where men begin at zero, and 
are to unfold and come to manhood as the object of God's 
decrees and providence and grace, and of the common sense 
which God has given to us. 

The whole drift of civil governments, of churches, of 
schools, and of families, should be to make men larger, 
bolder, more symmetrical, freer, and to do it by the way of 
discipline, driU, the knowledge of laws, and obedience to 
them. 

I have conducted this subject thus far without considering 



94 iATT AND LIBEBTY. 

it specially in its application to morality and religion ; but, 
after all, the end and drift of my discourse this morning is, 
Wliat does religion mean in a man ? The derivatiye meaning 
of the word religio7i is, To be bound ; to be tied up as by 
allegiance ; and the fulfillment of it, in a large part of the 
globe, has, unfortunately, been literal, and men have been 
tied iq:). The idea has been, very largely, that when a man 
became a Christian, he agreed with himself to give up danc- 
ing, and give up swearing, and give up gambling, and give 
up lying, and give up Sabbath-breaking, and give up dissipa- 
tion, and give up bad company ; and his creed, if he were to 
let it out, would be, ''1 will not do this, I will not do that, I 
will not do that, I will not do that," till by and by it will be 
as knotty as a pine plank sawn out of a small tree, l^ega- 
tives are not to be derided nor despised ; but a man who has 
nothing but negatives is a fool, and has no temperament, no 
vitality, no positiveness. The true religious man is a man 
who is positive and aflSrmative. A man who has nothing 
more than nots is nothing. To be anjrthing he must have 
actual virtues. 

A farmer goes to the agricultural fairs, next week or the 
week after ; and he says, ^^ I have a farm that I want to put 
in competition. It has not a weed on it — not one ; it has not 
a Canada thistle ; it has no porslain ; it has not a dock ; it has 
no plantain ; it has not any mullein. There is not a weed on 
it, absolutely." "Well," it is asked him, "what are your 
crops ?" " Oh, I— I—." "Have you any wheat ?" ":N'o." 
"Any corn?" "No." "Any grafts in the orchard?" 
^^No ; I have nothing of that kind — but I've got no weeds." 
And that is all ! 

There are a great many people who seem to think that 
religion means not doing wrong. As if a knitting machine 
would be considered good that never knit any stockings, be- 
cause it never misknit ! What is a man good for who simply 
does not do some things ? 

There are thousands of men that are bad who come nearer 
to the royal idea of manhood than many professed Christians, 
because they are positive, and do something — because they 
are not bladders filled with air — and because they are not 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 95 

dandelion blossoms, beautiful globes, worth nothing. A true 
man is a force-bearer and a force-producer. I understand 
that when a man becomes a Christian he has higher ideals, 
larger conceptions of life here aud of the life to come. 
The motives which are addressed to him from the bosom of 
God are an inspiration by which he becomes more, does more, 
longs for more, strives for more, gains more. Before, he 
lived a circumscribed life ; but now he moves out the walls 
on every side because he needs more room. "Lengthen thy 
cords, and strengthen thy stakes," is the right text for a 
true man. He that is a Christian ought to be a hundred 
times larger in every way than he was before he became a 
Christian. Larger in every way ? Yes, larger in every way. 
"What ! larger in his passions ? Yes, larger in his passions. 
His passions ought to be not only larger, but better and 
healthier. Pride ought to be stronger, only it ought to be 
in subjection to the law of love. It ought to be, under the 
influence of love, auxiliary to higher things, and not an auto- 
crat in its own right. Every part of a man's nature is to be 
built up, and is to be made subordinate to love. Anything 
that God thought it worth while to put in a man, from his 
toe to his eyebrow, from the crown of his head to the sole of 
his foot^ is worthy of our consideration. He has not em- 
ployed anything in the making of you that will not be needed 
for fuel. 

Take a great good-natured, jolly fellow, who sits on veran- 
dahs, and tells pleasant siories, and plays all sorts of games 
well, and is good at a pic-nic or a card party, and drinks a little 
too much wine. People say of him, "What a pity it is that 
he is not a Christian ! He is in a dangerous way ; and yet 
he is a capital man in many respects." He becomes a 
Christian, after having gone through certain proper exer- 
cises. He does not sit on verandahs any more. His 
thoughts no longer dwell on frivolous things. He does not 
laugh. He is not seen at card parties and pic-nics any more. 
He supposes these are wrong. What does he do ? He goes 
to church, and to prayer-meetings, and is a devout worshiper ; 
but he grows stupider and stupider all the time. Before he 
became a Christian he was a genial, good companion, but 



96 L^W AND LIBERTY. 

now he has cut that all off, and he does not take anything 
else on ; so that he really is weakened. To he sure, he may 
have withdrawn from certain faults ; hut he has lost nearly as 
much in another direction as he has gained in this. I should 
say to such a man. It was not sociality, or gayety, or facility 
in amusement, that was your sin, but making such things the 
end and aim of your life. What you want to do is to make 
a complete manhood in Christ Jesus the end of your life, and 
take those lower things as instruments. Let every part of 
your nature, enlarged and made better, enter into that com- 
plete manhood. Taking Love as their supreme governor, let 
all the elements of your being, sweetened and made more 
powerful, aid in accomplishing this great work in the soul. 
A man ought to be better when he knows that he is living 
for that godliness which ^^is profitable unto all things, hav- 
ing promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to 
come." And yet, many persons come into the church from 
the world where they had strength and momentum in imper- 
fect ways, and they lose that momentum and that strength 
because they do not understand that religion is not simply 
tying a man up, but tying him up to let him into a larger 
liberty. It drills him into obedience to law that he may be 
master of himself. No man is so free as that man who has 
accepted the law of God, which is expressed m the words, 
*'Thou shalt love God supremely, and thy neighbor as thy- 
self." There is no sound in the universe that cannot be 
chorded to that. Love is the only true concert-pitch. Let 
pride be the concert-pitch, and you cannot bring the orches- 
tra of human nature into agreement with it. Let taste be 
the concert-pitch, and you cannot make all the other facul- 
ties of a man harmonize with it. There is many a part of 
our being with which all the other parts cannot be made con- 
cordant. But sound the word love — love to God and man — 
and there is no passion or appetite, there is no taste, there is 
no social feeling, there is no intellectual element, there is 
no moral sentiment, that cannot be brought into perfect 
accord with it — yea, and be made nobler and better by it. 

He who understands that religion is the drilling of every 
part of his nature into accord with this great law of love by 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 97 

which Grod himself is bound, by which he governs, through 
which the world is ripening, and which is to fill the eternal 
heavens with blessedness — he that understands this, and ac- 
cepts that law in earnest, and obeys it, day and night, in the 
field, in the shop, on the sea, everywhere, and making pride 
and vanity and selfishness subservient to love, trains him- 
self in obedience to it till it is easier for him to be gracious 
and beneficent than anything else — ^he has become a man that 
has looked into the perfect law of liberty, and that is con- 
tinuing therein. He has become a citizen of the common- 
wealth of the universe, and is absolutely free. 

My Christian brethren, this is just what you need. I ob- 
serve that many persons never settle anything. They never 
carry a battle to its final results. You are now fighting with 
pride, as you were twenty years ago, and you are fighting 
with your temper as you were twenty years ago ; or, if there 
is any difference, it is because the fire of youth and early 
manhood has burned out in you. Grace has done nothing 
for you, and you have done little for yourselves. Many per- 
sons are just as avaricious, just as stingy, just as close-handed 
as they were when they began their Christian lives. They 
recognize it, and are sorry for it, and once in a while they 
shed impotent tears over it, and once in a while they offer a 
little resistance to it ; but they do not say to the intractable 
faculty, *' You shall come to this law of love, and you shall 
be trained and drilled till you obey it without flinching." 

Here is a man who stands behind his counter. He is bil- 
ious and dyspeptic, and at home he is cross to his wife, and 
snappish to his childi'en, and brutal to his inferiors ; but 
when he goes into his store, where it is his interest to be 
complaisant, he is very agreeable. If a person comes in to 
buy something, he puts on, for the occasion, a commercial 
smile ; but that is not benevolence — yes, it is benevolence just 
the same as moonshine is sunshine, cold, remote, reflected. 
Yet we are doing, in this, that and the other place, the 
same thing. We laugh at exaggerated instances of it, but 
we are not free from it ourselves. 

We do not trust Cod. We are anxious with care. We 
fret and worry about to-day and to-morrow. We do not love 



98 LAW AND LIBERTY. 

our neighbor as ourselves. We are envious and jealoas. We 
do not honor and prefer each other as we are commanded to. 
The welfare of man is not precious to us. Nothing pleases 
us so quick as a bad story told about somebody. There are 
persons who are ready to catch at criticisms, or anything sus- 
picious about folks, and are never specially gratified at hear- 
ing anything good about them. Such persons have not 
fulfilled the law of love in these things. On the other hand 
there are persons who are alwa3^s actuated by love, and are 
always glad to learn anything good, and sorry to learn any- 
thing evil, concerning their fellow-men. Love is their 
habitual disposition, morning, noon and night. They are 
always radiant and beaming, because their manifestation of 
love is automatic and unconscious. Where by education, by 
training and drill, the whole m an is subdued by this power 
of divine and human love, one is a Christian. 

You professed the Creed when you joined the church ; 
but oh, that you would profess something higher than that 
which the Creed means ! When you professed religion and 
joined the church you should have joined as a boy goes to 
school. Some seem to think that when a man joins the 
church he is like a celebrated portrait in a picture gal- 
lery, at which people point and say, *^ Governor So and So," 
or '^ Governor So and So." It is often thought that those 
inside the church are saints, and that those outside are sin- 
ners. It is no such thing. There are sinners inside as well 
as outside. Those that are inside are sinners under medica- 
tion, and the others are sinners without medication. Those 
that are inside are sinners in a hospital, and the others are 
sinners in their own houses. As the term sinner is generally 
used in the community, it is a very misleading and misinter- 
preting notion that men have. A man is a sinner whether he 
is in the church or out of it. A Christian is a man who is 
attempting to subdue every part of his nature to the law of 
God. That law is Love to God and to men ; and he who 
binds himself in slavery to it till he is perfectly subdued by 
it, till in its full strength it resides in him, and reigns there, 
and he rejoices, heaven rejoicing with him, in that victory 
by which he comes to a perfect liberty^ is a Christian. 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 99 

Oh, how narrow our views are of the power of God on 
the soul of man ! Do you tell me that religion is failing be- 
cause you see how bad a war is waged in the street where the 
desperate odds of business drive men hither and thither ? Do 
you tell me that religion is failing because men in public and 
political life gain their positions through cunning and craft, 
and that only here and there one endures ? Go with me to 
those places where the shadows that work grief and sorrow 
beat down on the household ; go with me to the all-patient 
mother's side; go with me to her who is stripped of every- 
thing in life but her hope in God, and who is servant of all 
the neighborhood ; go with me among the humble, and 
among the meek who shall inherit the earth, and you will 
find that there is a school where God, by the Holy Ghost, 
compels such obedience to the great law of love that persons 
rise up in simplicity and meekness, princes, kings, priests unto 
God, having the liberty of the realm, and do what they have 
a mind to because their whole soul has a mind to do the 
things which the law requires, and which God loves. 

Such is the liberty that makes me n free. He that is out 
of concord with those motions and throbs of the divine 
Heart that send currents of light through the universe is 
narrowing and dwarfing himself. He only is a full man who 
is a man in Christ Jesus. 



100 LAW AND LIBERTY. 

PRAYEE BEFOEE THE SERMON. 

Draw near to us by thy Spirit, Almighty God and Heavenly 
Father, and make thyself known to our thoughts, not by display, as 
once thou didst upon the burning mountain, not by force, but by the 
inspiration of gentle thoughts and sweet affections, by relieving us 
from darkness, and sorrow, and fear, and remorse, and by breathing 
upon us peace, and gladness, and good will and hope. Draw us far 
away from animal life — from those that are around about us ; from 
the bird, and from the insect, and from the beast; from all things 
that have but begun their lives ; for we are thine, we are God's sons, 
and our true life is nearer to thee and to the invisible than to things 
seen and visible. Therefore may we know thy presence in the eleva- 
tion of our souls ; in the springing forth of joys to meet thee ; and as 
the homeliest and lowliest things bear upon themselves tributes of 
joy in the morning wherein the sun beholds itself, and they are beau- 
tiful in his light, so may all our thoughts, joining in the light of thy 
rising glory, seem beautiful to thee; and may we reflect that thou 
art blessiog us with thyself as nothing else in all the realm of the 
universe can bless us. May we realize that we are blest in thy love, 
in a conscious strength derived from thee, and in holy hopes born 
not of ourselves, though in us, but of thee. 

Grant, we pray thee, that we may feel how much more we are 
than we seem to be, and how much less we are than we think our- 
selves to be. Grant that the things of which we boast, but which 
are poor, and perishing, may be revealed to us in their poverty, 
and the things which we neglect, wherein our true strength and 
our true greatness lie, may be revealed to us in their majesty and 
beauty ; and that we may go out of our ordinary life, its servility, 
its bondage and its painfulness, into our higher life, where we shall 
be hid with Christ in God, in whom every one hath a covert and 
a refuge. We pray that this day God may become a name not of 
fear nor of authority alone, but of love and of joy. Wilt thou help 
every one to-day to roll away the stone, if he sit in darkness, and 
behold the risen Saviour. May Christ come forth this morning to 
every soul as the messenger and the symbol of hope in immortality. 
We pray that thou wilt help every soul to appropriate something 
from thee, O blessed Saviour, that it needs. Help eYerj one who is 
conscious of deficiency, of ignorance, of short-comings, of perpetual 
transgressions, of wrongs done or permitted. Help each soul to lean 
upon thee, and to borrow of thee medicine, and food, and raiment, a 
staff for its weary feet, light for its eyes, hearing for its ears, and life 
for itself. 

Be with all of us. Become to us the first and the last, the begin- 
ning and the end, the Alpha and Omega. Grant that we may have 
in thee that inheritance which we lack in ourselves. 

We pray that thou wilt renew the joy that they have had whose 
joys have faded ; that thou wilt redeem from sorrow those who are 
bent and ready to break ; that thou wilt give strength to those that 
are weak; that thou wilt establish the feet of those that slide; that 
thou wilt deliver from their fears those that stand looking forth 



LAW AND LIBERTY. 101 

upon impending? dangers ; that thou wilt hush the anxieties of those 
that fret away the very fabric of life ; that thou wilt still the tumult 
of passion in them that are bestead by passion ; that thou wilt give 
control to those who are driven about by every wind of doctrine, 
and success to those who strive earnestly for that which is good, and 
are perpetually rolled back from it. 

Grant to every one, this morning, according to his necessity. May 
those that hunger and thirst after righteousness be filled, and behold 
the Saviour who hath in him that which they need — who hath some- 
thing that stands over against every want of the soul — who supplieth 
indeed the bread of life. 

We pray that thou wilt grant to those who have known thee, and 
rejoice in thee, and dwell in peace from day to day, more manifesta- 
tions of thyself, that they may every day come down from com- 
munion with God, as thy servant of old came down from the moun- 
tain, with a face shining with things spiritual, that men may behold 
and rejoice in the reflected light thereof ; and that they may become 
ministers of peace, of salvation, and of hope to all that are around 
about them. 

Grant, we pray thee, that we may have great joy of one another, 
to-day, as we dwell together for the hour. May we lay aside all the 
ugliness, and weakness, and pride, and envy, and jealousy, that so 
beset us in the world, and that separate us and make us so hurtful 
one to another. Grant that we may dwell in that peace which brings 
us nearer together. Grant that all the wrinkles which care has made 
may be smoothed out, that all trouble may be taken away, and that 
we may rejoice in each other as heirs of a common salvation, as chil- 
dren of a common parentage, and as pilgrims bound for a common 
blessedness in the land of immortality. 

We pray that thy blessing may rest upon all that we love. Go to 
those that we have left behind ; and visit those that have gone away 
from us and are upon the sea, or upon the land, in the city or in 
the wilderness, wherever they may be throug];iout the wide world. 

O Lord, grant that thy blessing may be distilled as dew upon 
every heart in this presence. We pray that this may be an hour in 
which secret petitions shall go up and receive the pledges of answer 
and fulfillment from thee. 

We pray that thou wilt bless this dwelling, and all that here con- 
trol and manage. May the cause of God, the purity of the Holy 
Spirit, and the power of divine love, abide under this roof forever 
more. May all that have come up hither receive a blessing of God. 
May this be to them a day indeed of rest from evil, and of aspiration 
toward good. 

Bless our whole land. Bring us more and more together in a true 
unity of reciprocal interests. May we be knit together in confidence, 
and in a desire for things that shall ennoble this whole nation. 

We pray that intelligence may prevail everywhere. We pray 
that strength may be imparted to the weak. We pray that this 
great and prosperous nation, builded up by a thousand precious 
influences, may grow strong for justice, for goodness, for the rights 
of mankind, for peace and for prosperity throughout the whole 



102 LAW AND LIBERTY. 

world. And may the day speedily come -when men shall love one 
another, and aid one another, and study the things which make 
for peace, and learn war no more; when there shall be no oppression 
known, nor any desire to oppress; when men shall he so strong that 
none can bind them; when the kingdom of Grod shall descend; and 
when the new heavens and the new earth in which dwelleth right- 
eousness shall appear. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit, ever- 
more. A men. 



-*^i^^^ » 



PRAYEE AFTER THE SERMOK 

Geant, we pray thee, dear Lord and Master, an incoming of 
light and knowledge that we may see more perfectly the truth; that 
we may know more perfectly that the way of Christ is the way of 
liberty ; that we may understand that suffering means learning, and 
that tears betoken smiles, as from thorns come roses. Grant that we 
may comprehend how by submission we rule; how by obedience we 
come to a state in which we no longer need commands ; how by con- 
forming to law in our innermost man we rise higher than the law. 
Grant to every one in thy presence some portion of this truth, that 
he may order his life in accordance with it. May self-will die out, 
and may conformity to the will of God take the place of it, in the 
heart of every one here. May we try to be better in our families. 
May we seek to treat each other, in all the affairs of life, with more 
justice and more kindness. May we endeavor to apply the Gospel to 
our conduct. May it drive away doubt, and envy, and jealousy, and 
all the imps that Satan sends upon us. We pray that we may become 
children of the light, and that we may be children of the day, and 
walk in the full communion of freedom here, in the hope of a yet 
greater emancipation, and more perfect development in the world 
that is to come. O Lord, chide us for our narrowness. We are not 
hungry enough. We do not aspire enough. Our longings are too 
few and too easily satisfied. Give us more discontent. Grant that 
we may have more aspiration. Create in us a true hungering of the 
soul for that which is infinite and enduring. We ask it not for our- 
selves nor in our own wisdom, but in the adorable name of our 
Beloved, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, shall be 
praises everlasting. Amen. 



V. 

"As A Little Child." 



a 



AS A LITTLE CHILD.'^ 



During the few weeks that I have been here, and have 
had the services of the Sabbath mornings under my charge, 
I have felt that both courtesy and good feeling required 
that, as far as possible, I should avoid all discussion and 
exposition that would raise questions of difference. Divided 
as the great Christian world is in various ways, internally 
and externally, into separate bands, it seems to me that 
the same courtesy should be employed when one stands in 
a promiscuous multitude in the community that is em- 
ployed in the intercourse between families. In every neigh- 
borhood there are certain elements that are different in 
one family and another; and politeness requires that they 
should not interfere with each other's living. Every one is 
entitled to his own liberty ; and there is a propriety in every 
other one respecting that liberty. I have undertaken, there- 
fore, on the Sabbath mornings when I have spoken to you, 
to discuss those elements which were spiritually fundamental, 
and which belonged to all Christian sects in common — and I 
shall this morning do the same thing : for when you touch 
the question of true Christian experience ; when you deal 
with the great subject of Christian character, all differences 
vanish. It will be found as you recede from the spiritual 
conception of manhood to the instruments by which men 
are educated that differences multiply and disputes increase ; 
but as you go from the visible toward the invisible, and dis- 
cuss the interior life of Christians, all differences gradually 
cease, and men come into perfect unity. If you could 
bring the whole great diverse brotherhood of Christians, 

PrGached at the Twin Mountain House, Sept. 20, 1874. Htmns: (Plymouth 
Collection) Nos. TT6, 733, " Doxology." 



104 "^S A LITTLE CHILD.'' 

under various names, together into a scene where all were 

lifted up to a holy enthusiasm in admiration for some great 

and noble deed, or in aspiration, you would find that they 

would take hold of hands together, and that there would be 

no separation. The essential element of Christianity unites 

men. Its instruments and external institutions divide them. 

Therefore he who speaks from the interior, and to the interior 

of Christian experience, speaks in accordance with the best 

judgments and the best aspirations of Christians of every 

sect. 

In the 18th chapter of Matthew, and the opening verse, 

are the following words : 

"At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is 
the greatest in the kingdom of heaven ? 

That is very much, if you should put it in modern phrase, 
as if one should say, *'What do you consider the most 
eminent state of Christian experience ? What is your con- 
ception of the most perfect manhood ?" 

" And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the 
midst of them, and said, Yerily T say unto you, except ye be converted, 
and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." 

Let alone who is the greatest there ; — you shall not even 

get in unless you become as little children. 

" Whosoever, therefore, shall humble himself as this little child, 
the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven." 

We are to recollect that our Master stood at a time of the 
world when in various nations the ambition of manhood had 
been, or was, very strong. The Chaldean and the Assyrian 
had their conception of what was the most becoming in a 
man — they had their ideal heroes, in other words ; the Greek 
had his ideal man and manhood ; the Roman had very dis- 
tinctly before his mind that which to him was the highest 
spectacle of manhood ; the Jews, who were not one whit 
behind them, had clear conceptions of what was necessary to 
a perfect noble manhood ; and our Master fell in with the 
universal disposition, of men in their better moods, or of the 
best men in their better moods, to seek ideal perfection ; 
and when they came io ask him, ^' Who is the greatest in the 
kingdom of heaven ?" — that is, ^''What is the highest man- 



"AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 105 

hood ?" — he took a little child and set him in their midst. 
And what was the signification of that ? 

The Master was surrounded by conceited men, whose ideal 
was so easily reached that there were tens of thousands in Jeru- 
salem who had reached it, and who had gone, as they thought, 
as far as human nature could go ; and perchance they were of 
those who said, '' What lack I yet ? '^ That was the spirit of 
the great mass of the best Jews. Their standard being so low, 
there were many elements that pulfed them up ; they felt 
tliat they knew a great deal ; they had read the Old Testa- 
ment — that is, the law of Moses, the prophets and the 
Psalms ; their teachers had inspired them with the feeling 
that knowledge consisted in a minute rendering and an exact 
understanding of the distinctions of the exterior Mosaic law ; 
they were very familiar with that ; they therefore felt that 
there was scarcely anybody that could instruct them ; and 
they were very proud and excessively conceited. Onr 
Master stood in the midst of scribes, doctors, teachers, and 
eminent Jewish saints; and their feeling was, *^We are 
ready to patronize you ; we recognize that you are an able 
man, that you are a prophet, that you are one of us ; and 
Ave will take you into our company if you will only dis- 
close an esjjrit de corps. If you will go with us we will 
accept you." In their conceit they felt that they were ortho- 
dox, that they were saints ; and Christ says to them, ^^If you 
wish to be eminent in the kingdom of heaven you must be 
converted — that is, you must be turned to just what you are 
not ; you must empty yourselves all out of yourselves, and 
start over again ; and you must be like little children." 

Now, what is it in childhood that makes the model or con- 
c3ption of manhood ? It is not that the child loves ; it is 
not that the child is weak ; it is not that the child is igno- 
rant : it is that in childhood universally there is the impetus 
and aptitude to learn. It is not a sense of ignorance so much 
as an appetite for knowledge ; and the whole force of the 
nature of the child, the whole impulse of the child's mind, 
IS, "What is that? What is that? What is that?" and 
the child sits artlessly and receives what every one tells it. 
It is hungry for knowledge, and knowledge pours into it in 



106 "^S A. LITTLE CHILD." 

ceaseless streams. But the Pharisees felt themselves to be 
like a bay into which the whole Atlantic ocean pours its 
tides, and fills it full, so that no more can be put into it with- 
out its running over ; and the Saviour said to them, ^^ There 
is no man among you that knows anything about the king- 
dom of God. Such is your self-satisfied state that unless 
you be converted and become as children, unless you are con- 
scious that you are profoundly ignorant, unless you have a 
different conception of what manhood means, and of the 
ways of obtaining it, and unless you become my scholars, and 
let me teach you the first elements of noble living, you shall 
not see the kingdom of heaven." 

What, then, is ^^ the kingdom of heaven" ? It is an ori- 
ental figure ; and it is a figure which is better understood in 
a monarchy, and under a despotism, than in our democratic 
republican government. We have to form very artificial 
notions of it. But we are familiar with what is meant by a 
catise — the cause of temperance, the cause of virtue, the 
cause of truth ; we are familiar with what is meant by purity 
and justice, and so on ; and our knowledge of these things 
will help us somewhat to understand what our Master meant 
by *^the kingdom of heaven." 

The exact definition is given by the Apostle Paul, where 
he says, *' The kingdom of God is not meat and drink [re- 
ferring to the sacrificial rites and feasts of the Jews], but 
righteousness, [right-living, rectitude of life, in intent and 
endeavor], and peace [not blindness nor stupidity] ." Peace 
does not mean the absence of disturbance. Peace is a posi- 
tive quality. It is the highest condition in which correlated 
faculties can exist. It is intense tranquility. When the 
strongest feelings are in accord and all right, the highest ex- 
citement is the most peaceful state. All excitements that are 
painful or injurious are so because men are not perfect 
enough ; because they are not high enough ; because they do 
not average enough. 

When you hear one of the noblest strains of Beethoven's 
symphonies, in ten or twelve different parts, it seems like one 
sound. Take those parts from each other, separate them, 
throw them against each other, and they agitate one another ; 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 107 

but when they are perfectly concordant all the instruments 
swell together with their different natures. They are so 
related that their varjdng sounds become as one sound, and 
are completely harmonious. 

When one feeling alone is excited, its excitement is dis- 
turbing, and the other feelings are in conflict ; but when the 
whole mind is excited together, and concordantly, there is no 
disturbance, but all is peace. And that jpeace which is here 
meant is a peace of vitality : it is not a peace of stupidity or 
indifference. It is one of the noblest, highest, best and most 
comprehensive of feelings. 

Then there is another element which the apostle mentions 
as belonging to the kingdom of heaven — namely, "joy in the 
Holy Grhost " — that is, inspired joy ; that rapture which 
comes not from a sordid love of things which we can see or 
handle, but from the experience of those nobler hours, those 
supreme moments which are given to men ; that ecstacy 
which comes from conscious communion, or from the uncon- 
scious possession of the highest feelings of our nature. 

When, therefore, you put these elements together, and 
bring them into order, and weigh them, and interpret them 
in our familiar manner, the kingdom of God is simply the 
Realization of Manhood in the highest form. It begins on 
earth and terminates in heaven. He only is in the kingdom 
of God who has begun to develop in himself, with earnest 
purpose, all those qualities, that whole line of conduct, which 
is leading him toward the full idea of perfect manhood which 
God meant when he set up man. 

Take a clock like that one in the office here, that never 
keeps time. What was it made for ? To keep time. That 
was the design with which it was put together and set 
a-going. It may wander from the original purpose of its 
maker, and go too fast or too slow ; nevertheless, that for 
which it was made was to register the lapse of time. That 
was the end which was contemplated in its construction. All 
clocks are made for that. It is what the man set out for 
who made it. He may have thought of selling it, and get- 
ting the money for it ; but the constructive idea back of the 
commercial one was that it should register time. That is 



108 "^S A LITTLE CHILD.'' 

the root of the matter in every clock ; and the clock is val- 
uable in proportion as it does this, and worthless in propor- 
tion as it wanders from its maker's design. 

Now, in the matter of manhood, the plenitude of reason, 
the fullness, richness, depth and power of the moral senti- 
ments ; the illumination that comes through the imagination ; 
all those illusive graces that flash over the mind through 
fancy and mirth and humor ; all those domestic affections 
which go where the mother-nature may not go in society rela- 
tions ; all those basilar forces which are indispensable to man 
in his warfare in the material world — all these elements (and 
how many there are of them ! How easily they are put out 
of adjustment ! How poorly they are constructed ! How 
much they lack that training which shall lead them to work 
upward and in the right direction !) — all these elements con- 
stitute the conception of man, in full disclosure, with all his 
powers of mind and soul and spirit developed so that the 
whole being is one that obeys the laws of matter, social laws, 
intellectual laws, moral laws and sjoiritual laws. 

Next, what is it to ''enter into the kingdom of God"? 
In the first place, you want to throw away the idea of a city, 
of a gate, or of any material entering-in. Whoever under- 
takes to be a man according to the instruction of the word 
of God, though his ideal may not be complete, and under- 
takes to use himself so as to make himself better, and so as 
to grow more and more manly, has entered the kingdom of 
God. 

Entering the kingdom of God, then, is entering a Chris- 
tian, a higher and nobler, life. Entering the kingdom of God 
is being better. Meaning to be better systematically, as the 
end of one's life, is to enter the kingdom of God. 

And what is being "converted"? It is 'beginning to do 
these things. What is it to be a farmer ? Well, it is to ob- 
tain one's livelihood, or rather occupying one's time, in the 
cultivation of the soil. What is it to become converted from 
a minister to a farmer ? It is to stop preaching much, and 
to go to work on a farm. It does not necessarily mean that 
I sball be a good farmer, or that I shall earn anything, or 
that I shall do my work in the best way, but that I shall de- 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 109 

vote my time to tlie business of farming. The moment I 
begin to devote myself to that business I begin to be a 
farmer. 

What is it for a man who has been a liar all his life long 
to become a man of veracity ? It is to set out with the pur- 
pose of fulfilling, as far as possible, the law of truth. It is 
hard for a man who has been living in an illusory world to 
get back into a world of realities ; and it is hard for a man 
who has equivocated from his childhood up to speak the truth. 
No man speaks the truth easily who has not been trying to 
all his life, and still less one who has all his life indulged 
in falsehood. But when a man says, ^' I have been a liar ; I 
see that lying is dishonorable and base ; and I am going to 
try to be a man of truth," and makes a business of it for days 
and weeks and months, and means to keep on, he has begun 
to be a truthful man. He may yet falsify every day ; but if, 
after all, he has his face set toward veracity, and toward 
overcoming the tendency to falsehood, and is growing in the 
belief of his neighbors, then he has begun to enter the king- 
dom of truth ; he is a part of it ; he is a disciple in it. 

A man is taken sick. The physician says that morbific 
influences have a course that they must run ; that when they 
have once started there is a tendency to keep on ; and he will 
also tell you that by and by there comes a point where, under 
medication, or by the forces of nature, this tendency is ex- 
hausted, where it consummates itself, and where there begins 
to be a recuperative tendency. This man has been three 
weeks confined to his bed, and his physician says " The crisis 
is past ; now there is a tendency to recovery." The man is 
*' getting well" ; he is '^ convalescent." But he is not well ; 
his eyes are heavy ; his bones ache ; his organs do not perform 
their functions perfectly ; he is on the '' sick list " yet ; it will 
be a long time before he will be on his feet ; and when he is 
on his feet it will be a long time before he can make much 
use of himself ; and after he commences to use himself it 
will be perhaps six months before he will be restored to full 
vigor and usefulness ; and yet when the physician says, 
" The crisis is past," the man has begun to get well. 

Now, to be converted means to set your face toward a 



110 "-4S A LITTLE CHILD:' 

higlier and nobler way of living — not to set yourself to do 
better according to the pattern of this neighborhood or ac- 
cording to the ayerage public sentiment of the community; 
but to set yourself to do better according to the pattern of 
the highest manhood. The moment a man takes in a con- 
ception of his relations to God, of his eternal existence, of 
the change spiritual by which, by and by, he is to drop this 
mortal body and be associated with the general assembly and 
church of the first-born, and with the spirits of just men 
made perfect, in the other life ; the moment a man compre- 
hends the scope of his whole being here and hereafter, and 
says, ** I am determined to live as a man should who has 
such a destiny in the life to come " — that moment he has 
entered into the kingdom of God. 

We are stopped at this point by misconceptions wide- 
spread. In the first place, men say, '^I understand by 
conversion a great change wrought in a man by which he 
passes from death to life, so that whereas yesterday he was a 
great sinner, to-day he is a child of grace ; so that a man 
who is in the darkness of ignorance is immediately lifted into 
the light of truth, wherein everything becomes new to him." 
This impression is the more mischievous because it has a root 
of truth in it, a figurative expression being treated as though 
it were literal truth. 

A man gets up in a conterence meeting, a love-feast, or 
some church assembly, and says, ''I was conscious that there 
was a great struggle in me against God and righteousness ; 
and I was conscious of being suddenly led by the power of 
God so that everything seemed new to me. I never heard 
the birds sing so before. The world never seemed so beauti- 
ful to me before. I never before seemed to love everybody 
so. Everything appeared different. I was a new man. I 
was changed — completely changed." He really does feel as 
though he was completely changed. Well, is he ? Let us 
see. He has been a stingy man. Is his stinginess quite 
dead ? He has been a very proud man. The first effect of 
this spiritual shock that he has received was such that his 
head is not held so high, and his neck is a great deal more 
limber ; but is his pride dead ? You shall soon after hear 



"ulS A LITTLE CHILD,'' HI 

him say, '* We have our trials and troubles in the Christian 
life as elsewhere. I have had much light and comfort since 
I became a Christian ; but I have had my ups and downs." 
What does he mean by *'ups and downs" ? He means that 
he was not completely changed by the Spirit of God. He 
hega7i to be a Christian — that was the only change which he 
underwent. He simply started in the Christian course. His 
old habits were not burned up. There was a change ; and 
pride, love of money, vanity, the affections, all the faculties 
of the mind, received an impulse in the right direction ; but 
that impulse had not consolidated itself into fixed habits ; 
and every man that is born into the kingdom of God, or con- 
verted, is merely started in the Christian life. 

A man says, '^I am going to emigrate. This is a poor 
country about the White Mountains ; a man must be a stone 
to be contented to earn his living on these farms ; I am going 
to Oregon, where the land is worth having ; " but he cannot 
sell his farm ; and he must look after his old mother, who 
cannot go ; and he is hindered in various ways from carrying 
out his intention. He thinks about it much as many people 
think about becoming Christians. They want to be Chris- 
tians ; they never see any exhibition of Christian life, or 
witness any religious ceremony, that it does not stir them up 
and make them wish they were Christians ; they feel that 
they must be Christians some time or other. By and 
by the mother dies, and the man says, '^ One string is 
broken that kept me here : now, if I can get rid of my 
farm, I will go." But there are vacillations in his mind. 
He says, '^ Can I get enough money to go with ?" By and 
by he begins to read and think and inform himself. At 
length he sells his farm, and he has, perhaps, a thousand 
dollars ; and he says, '^ What can I do with it ?" He says at 
last, turning it over seriously in his mind, '^I will go — I will 
go next Monday." Next Monday comes, and he starts. 
After traveling a day, he gets to Boston. An acquaintance 
meets him there, and says, ^^ Hallo ! I understood you were 
going to Oregon." '^I am going there," says the man, ''but 
I have not gone." Yes, he is going; but he is in J^ew 
England yet.; and when he has traveled another day he will 



112 "^S A LITTLE CHILD.'' 

be there still. He may stop in New York a week ; but he is 
on his way to Oregon. When he is out of New York State 
and in the Western States he may wish to stop and see things 
there and make inquiries, but he is on his way to Oregon. 
He has begun his journey, although the comprehensive ob- 
ject for which he set out is not attained but is yet in a far 
distant land. 

A man says, '*I have been living a wicked life, without 
regard to the future, and now I am going to take a larger 
conception of manhood, to live for my Saviour, for eter- 
nity, for my own welfare here and hereafter, and for the 
honor and elevation of my fellow men." He surveys the 
matter and forms his purpose, and says, " I will, by the grace 
of God, undertake to live from this time forth by a higher 
rule and in a better way." That man is converted. How 
much is he converted ? Well, he has started in the right 
way. But every subsequent day of his life he will find out 
that it is one thing to resolve, that it is another thing to 
execute, and that on entering upon a Christian life a man 
enters, not u]3on a course which by the omnipotent power of 
Grod has been shaved smooth and clean so that he rolls like a 
ball downhill easily all the time, but upon an education the 
most comprehensive and the most difficult that a man can 
conceive of. 

When you have entered upon a Christian life you have 
undertaken, under all manner of circumstances and with 
every influence operating uj)on you, to take the forces of 
nature which are working incorrectly in you, and to take 
your understanding and moral sentiments and spiritual dis- 
positions, and overrule them and control them so that you 
shall fulfill the great law of love to God and man. 

ISTow, when a man begins such a work as that, he is like a 
boy that has gone to school. We are not further along, most 
of us, than such a one. The exceptions I shall have occa- 
sion to mention in a moment. The popular idea of a Chris- 
tian is, that before he was a Christian he was a sinner — in 
other words, that he was a bag full of all sorts of weed-seeds, 
and that the Spirit of God came along and shook them up 
and emptied them out, and put the bag under a hopper, and 



"AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 113 

filled it full of vflieat, and tied it up, and set it in the cliurch, 
where people point at it and say, ''He is a Christian. He 
used to be a sinner full of vile seeds from bottom to top, but 
now he is all wheat." Men speak of persons in the church 
according to that false theory. They think that God has 
burned up all the chaff and straw, all that is inferior in them, 
and that they are filled with the Divine Spirit. Instead of 
that, Christ says to a man, ''Would you be saved? Well, 
come after me, and let me teach you." That is the import of 
"Follow me" and "Become my disciple." Disciple simply 
means scholar. Christ is a school-master to us. We 
must learn in his kingdom divine ideas, and then we must 
practice them. We must be not only taught, but trained 
and drilled, in Christ's teaching, until it has become a part 
of our nature. 

No man who is beginning to be a Christian is more than 
a beginner, or can be, in the very nature of the human 
mind ; and when a man is converted — that is to say, when he 
has had a clear revelation of the enormity of sin, and he 
revolts from it, and turns away from it, and has a more or 
less vivid conception of the higher Christian life, and sets 
his face toward it, saying, " I believe that I am converted, 
and that I have entered into the kingdom of Christ" — he is 
like a little child, and has everthing to learn. 

I make these explanations for a variety of reasons. First, 
many persons think, when they are converted, that they are 
perfect Christians. When a man has gone through convic- 
tion, and had an- awful time, and wrestled with the Prince of 
Darkness, and he gets up in meeting, and says, " I remember 
that I could not eat my meals, that I tossed in bed two whole 
nights without sleep, and that when I knelt in prayer all 
seemed dark, till by and by I heard a voice, and peace came 
into my soul, and I shouted, ' Glory, glory, glory,' " people 
feel as though that experience showed that he had been 
rinsed and cleansed and scoured out, and that all in him 
that was bad was clean gone ; but it is not so. 

These dramatic experiences I do not in any way ridicule ; 
but I smite them when they are misinterpreted so as to be 
mischievous, and I say to persons who, though they have 



114 "^-S A LITTLE CHILD.'' 

them, are yet living a low life, ^^Do you not know that your 
conduct is inconsistent with your profession ? Do you not 
know that you are constantly breaking your Christian vows ? 
Do you not know that you are considered by those who are 
acquainted with you as no better than an infidel man, and 
that many who do not pretend to be Christians are regarded 
as more reliable than you ?" They say : '' Oh ! well, you 
know that Christians sometimes backslide ; but I have been 
converted, and I have the promises, and I am going to get 
into heaven." They think that from that dramatic expe- 
rience which they went through when they were first con- 
verted, as they supposed, they are sure of being saved. 

A man enters college and passes his examination, which is 
a pretty tough one, and is matriculated. But during term- 
time he does not study, but has his sprees and frolics, and 
does not make any preparation for the examination that is 
coming round ; and when he is warned by his teachers and 
classmates, who say to him, " Look here, my friend, you are 
getting into trouble by not studying and preparing for the 
examination," he says, ** I'd like to know if I'm not a mem- 
ber of the Freshman class. Haven't I been examined, and 
haven't I got in ? Don't I belong to this college ? I may be 
worse or better in the coming examination, but here I am 
in it." Yes, and he may be out of it when the examination 
comes ! 

" Many shall say unto him, Have we not prophesied in thy name, 
and in thy name done many wonderful works; and he shall profess 
unto them, I never knew you." 

Men say, '' Don't you know what a time I had when I was 
convicted and converted ?" What does God care for that ? 
The secret purpose of God is to make you men, and redeem 
you from animalism, and from the thrall and narrowness of 
pride and selfishness, and augment and enrich your nature, 
and edify you, — as the Scripture phrase is, build you up, — 
into resplendent, heroic manhood ; and what boots it, under 
such circumstances, that you simply began to be a Christian ? 
The question is, have you been built up ? 

I have seen in IS^ew York City, ten or twelve foundations 
for buildings where the cellar walls were started, and I 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 115 

have seen those cellar walls stand for six years, to my certain 
knowledge, without any superstructure built upon them. So 
I have seen many Christians converted who never got above 
the cellar walls. Nothing was ever built upon them. They 
never became perfect men in Christ Jesus. 

We are converted, and have entered the kingdom of God, 
when we have become as little children, and have undertaken 
to be better men, according to our light and knowledge in 
every direction ; when we have undertaken to educate our- 
selves in a better way of thinking, and feeling, and living ; 
when we have undertaken to build up a better manhood : and 
it does not make any difference whether we come into the 
kingdom of God with uproar and a dramatic experience or 
not. If you are in the school of Christ and are faithful 
scholars, that is the main thing ; and if you come in with 
bands playing and flags flying, and you are poor scholars, it 
will not do you any good that you have been converted and 
are in the church. You are to become as little children, in 
order that you may grow in grace. It is the attainment 
which you have made toward Christian manhood that is to 
measure your growth and determine the finality of your life 
and disposition. 

But while on the one side I would expose these mistakes 
that men commit to their detriment, on the other side I 
make this exposition for the encouragement of thousands 
and thousands of persons who were instructed by Christian 
parents all through their childhood, and who have a substan- 
tial knowledge of the truth as it is laid down in Christian 
schemes, and who have strong yearnings and desires to live 
better, but who feel self-rebuked, and struggle in their 
minds. There are before me persons who have said, thou- 
s.ands of times, ^^I do feel as though, if I were only con- 
verted, I should like to live a Christian life." There are 
thousands who have wistfully looked on when father and 
mother or brothers and sisters have gone to partake of the 
Lord's Supper and said, ^'I wish I were worthy and could 
go ; but I have never been converted. I do not belong to 
the church, and, therefore, the Lord's Supper is not 
for me." 



116 *'AS A LITTLE CHILD:' 

Well, if you are standing and waiting for the Spirit of 
God instantly to catch you up, and strike light and heat 
through you, so as to transform you at once, then you are 
waiting upon an error ; but it is possible for any one of you, 
at any moment, to be a Christian, now, here, before you 
leave your seat, while you are listening to me. 

Suppose tiiere were war again, and I were calling for 
soldiers, would you not become a soldier the moment you 
gave your name to me to be enrolled ? Would you not con- 
sider yourself a soldier when you had separated from your 
friends and companions, and gone into the army, and signed 
your name, or given me leave to sign it for you? You would 
not be a soldier in one sense, but in another sense you would 
be. You would not have received any drill, but nevertheless 
you would have enlisted. 

Now, it is not necessary that a man should be a whole 
Christian, it is not necessary that he should be educated in 
all the lore of Christ, in order to be a Christian. The mo- 
ment he enters upon a Christian life he is like a child that 
has just entered a school. How does a child become a schol 
ar ? He enters the school as an abecedarian. He is not far 
along, to be sure ; but he is beginning ; and he is as really 
a scholar as he would be if he were further advanced in his 
education. 

Suppose a child six years old on returning from school 
where he had just been received as a pupil should say, 
^^ Father, I am a scholar." And the father says, ''If you 
are a scholar I will examine you ;" and he takes down New- 
ton's Principia and questions the child upon it. The father 
would show himself to be a fool in his idea of what consti- 
tutes a scholar. It is not to be supposed that a child in 
school would have that familiarity with an encyclopedia which 
belongs to the higher stages of development. 

How much knowledge is it necessary that a man should 
have in order to begin to be a Christian ? How much knowl- 
edge must a man have in order to begin to pray ? He need 
not have any. The desire to pray is suflScient. That makes 
you like a little child. That was what you needed, and you 
have found it out ; and the way to practice a Christian vir- 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 117 

tue is the way to show how very little you know. Let a man 
begin at any point in the Christian life with this thought : 
"I honestly mean to live according to the Christian pattern, 
the rule and law of Christ." What shall he do first ? I do 
not care what he does first. Christ says, *^If you give a 
cup of water in my name to a disciple, you shall not lose 
your reward." He says, *^ The kingdom of God is like a 
seed." What is a seed ? It is an oak-tree in embryo. How 
much of an oak-tree is it ? It is an acorn. This is planted ; 
it is hidden. The first year it sprouts ; and the second year it 
rises a little above the ground ; but you will have to wait ten 
or fifteen or twenty years before it will give much shade ; 
and it will be a hundred years before it becomes an acre- 
spreading tree. 

'Now, the kingdom of God in the soul of a man, accord- 
ing to the declaration of Christ, being like a seed, begins at 
the seminal form. It is a germ which grows. When one 
wishes to become a Christian man, and begins to act upon 
that wish, he is at most a seed, a germ, which must grow. 
You cannot, therefore, accept any doctrine of grace which 
says that by the Divine Spirit you shall be endowed with 
Christian excellences miraculously. You must begin at the 
bottom, and learn thing by thing, thing by thing, all the 
way through. 

I am asked, *' Suppose now, Mr. Beecher, one should come 
to you, in Brooklyn, on communion day, early in October, 
and say, ' I have been thinking of my past life, and I am not 
satisfied with it : my mind runs in too low a channel ; my 
ideals are ignoble, base, worldly, and I have but an imperfect 
knowledge of the law oi God, though so far as I can see it 
requires right living, and I am determined to attain it — may 
I partake of the Lord's Supper ?' " I would say to him, 
^^ Yes, you may. JSTot that it is going to do you any miracu- 
lous good, but that, it will produce an impression on your 
intellect and imagination."* ^'May I join your church?" 
^^Yes, if I have evidence that you are intelligent enough to 
know what you are doing, and if I perceive that you are de- 
termined, according to the best of your ability, to live a 
Christian life, and that you have begun it. Under such cir- 



118 "A.S A LITTLE CHILD.'' 

cumstances I will take you into my cliurcli as a child is taken 
into an academy." Is it asked, whether I require an exami- 
nation ? Yes, I do. I say to one applying for admission to 
a school, *^ If you do not know enough to enter the academy, 
you had better go into the primary school :" and I take him 
in, not because he is a perfect scholar, but because he wants 
to learn. And to a person applying for admission to the 
church, I open the door, and say, ^^ Do you want to live a 
more manly life ? Are you willing and determined to pattern 
your life on the ideal manhood as set forth by Christ Jesus ?" 
If he gives affirmative answers to these questions, I say, ^^ You 
had better come into the church, because the church is a 
place where we take men who are desirous of doing these 
things, and where they do them in little before they can do 
them in large. " 

If there is a person here who is discontented with his way 
of living, and wishes he could live a higher life, and can say, 
'^I accept the ideal which is laid down in the Gospel, and 
will try to do better, taking Christ as my pattern," I regard 
him as a Christian — a Christian child. He is converted, and 
has become as a little child, and is ready to be further in- 
structed. 

Well, but, is not that a very loose and careless state- 
ment ? Will not many unworthy persons say, '^ I have some 
virtues ; I have enough stock to get into the church with." 
Will not people take advantage, and get into the church, and 
be satisfied with a superficial life, and undervalue the neces- 
sity of a deep moral suhsoiling ? I have no doubt that there 
maybe such cases ; but, on the other hand, in trying to keep 
them out, the view of the kingdom of God by which it is 
attempted to keep them out will also keep out many timid, 
sincere, sensitive persons. By such a course twenty will be 
hurt or hindered who ought to be in the church, where one 
is kept out who ought not to be there. I say, therefore, to 
the many young men and maidens here. You have a knowl- 
edge of what is expected of you ; and if, having that knowl- 
edge, you have an impulse in the right direction, that is 
sufficient. Sufficient for what ? Sufficient for a leaven, to 
begin with : not enough to end with (that comes by educa- 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 119 

tion), but enough to begin with. It is not only your duty, 
standing with the light of truth shining down upon you, to 
accept it and live in accordance with it ; but it is your privi- 
lege to take your ground on that, and say, ''I am willing to 
become a scliolar, in order that I may become a full-grown 
man." And the mystery being all gone, why do not you be- 
gin to educate yourself ? 

Let me say, further, that many persons, as soon as they 
have gone into the church, are apt to feel as a person does 
who has insured his house. It may be burnt up, but it is 
insured, and he has a sense of security. 

A man, going to Europe, may be sea-sick, and may not 
enjoy his voyage ; but he says, ''What matters it that I am 
miserable on the way ? I shall soon be landed there, and 
then I shall feel all right." So, many persons regard the 
church as a life-boat designed to get men safely off from this 
world into heaven ; and when they are in the church they 
feel safe. They say, " I may be a little poorer, I may be a 
little worse off than others in a worldly point of view ; but 
being in the church I am secure, and shall go to heaven. 
My passage is all paid, my insurance is taken out, and noth- 
ing can interfere with my safety." 

It is no such thing. The church is nothing in the world 
but simply an educating institution. A man may go to col- 
lege and be a blockhead still. A man may enter upon a 
trade and be a bungler all his life. A man may go into the 
church and be coarse, and hard, and selfish, and proud, and 
vain, and not have at all the education that is adapted to a 
Christian life, or that it was intended to give him in the 
church. 

Therefore, when a man goes into the church he goes there 
as a scholar goes into a school, or as an apprentice goes into 
a shop. He goes in for practice ; he goes in to be taught ; 
he goes in to learn a higher mode of life ; and if we could 
get out of men's minds the idea that a sanctity comes from 
adhesion to the church, as if it were an equivalent for per- 
sonal endeavor, for study, for labor, for conscientious respon- 
sibility, for yearning aspiration, for pressing forward, it 
would save them from much misconception, and from many 



120 "^-S A LITTLE CHILD," 

mistakes. It is equivalent to nothing of the sort. It is a 
help toward these things. You may be better for being in 
the church, and you may be worse : if it helps you you are 
better, and if it hinders yon you are worse, 

A man is converted. He goes into the church, and joins 
himself to those who believe they are converted, and who are 
making a common endeavor to live aright. He says, after a 
week or ten days, '^Look liere. Parson, I guess you had 
better take my name off from that roll." ^^What is the 
matter ?" says the parson. ''Well, on such a night Jim and 
I quarreled, and I knocked him down, and I could not con- 
trol my temper. There is no grace in my heart, or I never 
would have done that, although I do mean to live better. 
You had better take my name off." He is the very man that 
needs to be in the church. 

Suppose, for instance, a man should say to a hotel keeper, 
in a terrific storm, at night, when the snow was blinding 
everybody, and when the wind was whirling everything 
about, ''Look here ! See how I am hurled about by the 
wind and storm. I'm not going into the hotel because I am 
not fit." That he is knocked and beat about is the very rea- 
son why he should go in. 

And the fundamental condition on which you went into 
the church was that while you were under obligation to re- 
strain your temper and conduct, and put hindrances in the 
way of your wrong-doing, nevertheless, you did not profess 
that your temper was completely under control. You went 
there to have it controlled. It got the better of you once, 
but that is no reason why you should not stay in the church. 
You knocked a man down ; but the experience connected 
with that event may have been a good lesson to him, or to 
you, or to both. You should learn from your mistakes. 
A man who does not know how to learn from his mistakes 
turns the best schoolmaster out of his life. We ought to 
profit from our follies and weaknesses and blunders. 

You went into the church and got drunk. Well, you 
have been sober for six months — a thing which you could not 
have said during ten years before. The fact that you have 
improved should be an encouragement to you ; and the fact 



"AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 121 

that you are not wholly reformed is a reason why yon should 
remain amonsf those who can aid vou. 

*' We that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak." 

We are subject to the same temptations as our fellow men, 
and we are exhorted by the apostle to shield them and sympa- 
thize with them. 

A man goes into the church to learn how to live Chris- 
tianly. He does not say that he is perfect in any point. He 
is under instruction. He swears. It is not less than wrong. 
He ought to be ashamed of his swearing. His conscience 
ought to smite him. He ought to blush at the thought of it. 
But he ought not to consider all as lost because he has sworn. 
He should profit from that wickedness. If he deals with it 
wisely it may be wholesome to him, like tonic bitters to a man 
who is in a feeble state of health. It is a thing, to be con- 
demned, but it is no reason why he should say that he is not 
a Christian, or why he should not be one. 

A man goes into the church. He is in business, and every 
man about him is actuated by selfishness, and resorts to 
adroitness, and is seeking his own interest; he is obliged 
to watch and guard against their avarice ; and he says, '^I 
have been sordid, hard, untruthful. There I did not exactly 
tell the truth. I am afraid I did make a slight misrepresen- 
tation there. A pretty fellow I am, pretending to be a 
Christian, and playing the hypocrite ! I have not been sin- 
cere nor honest. I have lied ; and how can a man who lies 
and equivocates call himself a Christian?" Well, do not you 
think there is need of his being one ? and do not you think 
he has a conviction of sin of the right sort ? — not that great 
generic conviction which men have when they measure them- 
selves against God's law in a general way, but that specific 
conviction which a man has, when he says, '^I am temptable 
in this faculty and in that ; and my vanity and pride are 
leading me into temptation." 

If, when you are beginning to find out the reality of your 
sickness, the doctor is caUed in, and he asks what your diffi- 
culty is, " Oh," you say, '^ I am a little unwell ; I have a shght 
fever." He gives you a little cream of tartar, has your feet 
soaked, and directs that you shall be put to bed ; but he does 



122 "^S A LITTLE CHILD.'' 

not know much about your case. The true way, when a man 
goes to his doctor, and represents himself as being sick, is for 
the doctor to take him one side, and inquire into his symp- 
toms, and trace the disease to the yital organs, to the neryes, 
or to the muscles, and put his finger on the trouble, that he 
may know just what to do. 

'Now, in regard to a man who is attempting to be a Chris- 
tian, it is a great deal better for him to know specifically 
where it is that he sins, and what power or passion or weak 
point it is that stands in his way. The incidental failures of 
men who are trying to be good are the very points where 
their convictions are practical, and where they have some val- 
idity. Aside from these their convictions are apt to be gen- 
eric and imaginative, and of little practical force. You 
cannot, however, if you are proud, learn how to be humble 
in a day. You must not excuse yourself for the sins that you 
commit through pride, and say, '* I am proud, and could not 
help it ;" but if you find that you are proud, if you find that 
pride is organic in your nature, you are, in admitting its 
faults, to condemn yourself for them so far as it is in your 
power to prevent them ; yet you are to recognize that it will 
require time to entirely correct them. It will take ten years 
to educate pride so that it shall work with -benevolence ; and 
to so educate it is a part of the business of being a Christian. 

The mistake of many professed Christians is that of re- 
lying upon what they call their ^^ hope." Many persons say 
that they are going to heaven because they have a hope. 
What is "a hope ? Suppose a snake should take its last year's 
skin, which it has cast off, and think it wks bigger for that 
old dry skin ? It would be very much like a Christian who 
takes what he calls his hope, that was never worth much, and 
that becomes less and less valuable the older it grows, and 
rests upon that. Many people talk in meetings about their 
hope, their hope, their hope, — ^but their hope is of no conse- 
quence if it is merely a thing of the past. 

Now, the fact is, you are a scholar ; and the question is. 
What have you learned ? Are you stronger anywhere than 
you were ? Are you better anywhere ? Are you gaining, on 
the whole ? Do you feel as though being a Christian was a 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 123 

business all oyer, outside and inside, touching life every- 
where, so that you must needs, day by day, be lifted up and 
empowered by the help of God ? If so, you are leading a 
true Christian life. If you can get help from the church, 
do so — the church was made to give help to such as you ; but 
if you cannot get help from the church you are not obliged 
to go into the church. The church is not obligatory any 
more than Eulton Ferry is. I can refuse to cross the river on 
the ferry-boat, and say, ^' I won't pay the cent, or two cents : 
I am going to swim." I should have a right to swim if I 
preferred ; but I should be a fool if I did. And if you say, 
*' I do not want to join the church," you are under no obliga- 
tion to join it. It was meant for your convenience and as- 
sistance ; but if you think you can get along without it you 
are at perfect liberty to dispense with it. There is no obli- 
gation on any man to accept it. It is an overture of mercy, 
and not an overture of obligation, and is he wise who re- 
fuses it ? 

So, then, the kingdom of God consists in the actual 
existence of a superior manhood in men. Entering the 
kingdom of God is the beginning oif education toward that 
superior manhood. No man can have the results of this 
education given to him at once. No man can overcome the 
tendencies that are in him immediately. It is not the office 
of the Divine Spirit to change a man from an imperfect to a 
perfect being by a direct command ; it is the office of the 
Divine Spirit to tuoi^k in a man to will and to do of the good 
pleasure of God, from day to day, leading him more and 
more into a perfect, completed manhood. 

To be a Christian means to live right ; to act according to 
the highest ideal of rectitude ; to learn how, more and more, 
to carry one's self in obedience to the divine law ; and he 
who does that may have great joy (that is a matter of tem- 
perament), or great sorrow (that also is a matter of tempera- 
ment). He may have great struggles, partly because he does 
not understand himself, and partly because he does not 
understand those by whom he is surrounded ; but he may be 
a Christian notwithstanding. And the evidence of this is 
not whether he is in the church or out of the church. The 



124 "-^S A LITTLE CHILD." 

true evidence is a growth toward a nobler way of living, in 
thought and feeling — that is to be a man in Christ Jesns ; 
and he that is trying to grow in that direction has a right to 
say, ** If T persevere I shall by the grace of God be saved. 
I am not to be saved because I am so good, nor because I 
have attained so much. God's love saves me ; but I must be 
salvable ; I must be in a condition in which I can be saved ; 
and I am passing more and more into that condition from 
day to day, and I hope at last to attain the blessedness of the 
heavenly rest." 

Under these circumstances I wish to say to parents who 
are bringing up their children, that much of this work 
which is usually deferred until adult life may be accomplish- 
ed in childhood. I think that children may often be brought 
up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord at an earlier 
age than it is commonly supposed that they can. But all 
children do not require the same training, and the results of 
training are not the same in all children. It is said, '*If 
you bring up your children right when they are young, they 
will not depart from their right bringing up when they are 
old." That is true as a general rule, but suppose you take a 
child that has a bad father and a bad mother, whose fathers 
and mothers were also bad ; suppose you take a child that has 
inherited through several generations accumulating tendencies 
toward the flesh and to evil ? It is a very different thing to 
bring up that child right, from what it is to bring up a child 
right, whose parents were good people, and who has always 
been under the best moral influences. 

You have the greatest difficulty in bringing your children 
up right, and the man over the way has no trouble with his. 
On the one hand he says, *^ I never used a whip on any of 
my children, and I never had more than once or twice to re- 
buke this girl. None of them are vicious, and all of them 
have respect for and are obedient 'to the law." On the other 
hand you say, ^^I try to bring up my children as his are 
brought up ; but they are selfish, and jealous, and quarrel- 
some, and troublesome in every way, and I cannot do any- 
thing with them. I do not see why his grow up so well- 
behaved and mine do not." It is because your children are 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD." 125 

not his. Suppose a maD that had wolves' cubs to bring up, 
should compare himself with another man that had lambs to 
bring up ? It is one thing to bring up lambs, and another 
thing to bring up wolves' cubs. 

Our children are of all sorts. If, however, they are taught 
from their earliest childhood their relation to God, to the 
other life, and to the nobilities of this life, and if they are 
trained a? they are taught, it will be comparatively easy to 
bring them up right. But it will always be harder to bring 
up some children than others, because some are by their or- 
ganic structure further away from God than others. You 
can bring all up so that the world will be better than if they 
had not been trained ; but some can bring up their children 
with more ease than others. 

Why should there be that difference ? Ask God. I do 
not know. That is the way it works, and no man can tell 
why. The question for every man to ask is, ^^ What is my 
duty ? What is my privilege ? What is 7ny opportunity ?" 
If God has -given you children that are hard to bring up, it is 
your life business to bring them up, and you must accept it. 

If your children are easy to bring up, you need not fret 
lest they will be mere moralists. Many people are concerned 
because their children are sweet, loving, and compliant, so 
that they cannot get an awful experience out of them. It 
is as if the bass viol should mourn because it cannot do 
what the flute does. It is as if the bass should complain 
because it is not like the tenor ; the tenor because it is not 
like the alto ; and the alto because it is not like the soprano. 
There is a difference between wind and stringed instruments, 
and there is a difference between the various parts of music ; 
and there is just as much difference in human life between 
individuals. 

Your children are susceptible of different degrees of edu- 
cation. They begin at different points in relation to moral 
perfection — some far away, and some much nearer ; and that 
according to the great principle of heredity, as shown in the 
Old Testament. Every one must take his children where he 
finds them, and bring them up as best he can. 

The point that I wish to make is this : that a child that 



126 *'^-S A. LITTLE CHILD." 

is brought up to seek truth, and honesty and obedience, and 

that as he grows up to man's estate has these things presented 

to him, will find it easier to pass into the next higher stage of 

positive choice — of yoluutary obedience, not to parents, but 

to God — than if he had not been rightly instructed. He will 

find it a world easier to enter upon a self -chosen life of higher 

consecration than if he had not been well brought up. If 

you say of a child that has been brought up well that he 

must be conyerted, I say that the transition in his case will 

be almost insensible and inyisible, and that his instruction 

is right in arialogy and runs parallel with adult life. It is a 

process by which he learns how to ayoid eyil and how to do 

good. 

Thece are some who have always taught us that conyer- 

sion is the work of the Holy Spirit, that without the Holy 

Spirit it is all an illusion, and that any other yiew tends to 

produce a sense of self-righteousness. I belieye that as much 

as eyer ; but this also I believe : that when the Spirit of God 

acts, it acts according to the divine injunction, " 

" Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is 
God that worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure." 

Sun! bring me out violets and daisies from. yonder 
sand-biank. For hundreds of years the sun has been shining 
on the desert sands of Sahara, and never has it produced a 
flower there ; but in the meadow over against the house where 
my father brought me up, every year there were in the early 
spring an abundance of wild flowers. What is the diflerence 
between the shining of the sun on a sand heap and on loam ? 
The loam is full of organic forms — fall of seeds ; and when 
the sun shines upon it, these seeds sprout and grow, and 
flowers, grass, etc., are the result ; whereas, the sand is desti- 
tute of such organic forms, so that when the sun shines upon 
it no vegetation is the result. Where the soil is favorable, 
the sun's shining causes the plant to put forth a stem and 
throw down roots. Does it create those roots and that stem ? 
No, it merely gives the stimulus which is necessary to their 
development. The preexisting condilions are such that the 
stimulus which the sun. gives is all that is needed to secure 
growth. 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD:' 127 

Now, in order to use the brain, — all the faculties, the 
reason, the affections, and the moral sentiments,^ what we 
need is the stimulus of the divine Spirit. Then we use them 
according to great natural laws. God does not use them for 
us. He shines on us, and we use them. We are workers 
together loitli God, he giving the great generic stimulus by 
which our faculties develop, according to natural laws, the 
results which are required of us. 

It takes nothing from the glory of God to have the world 
act as he made it to act, or to have mankind develop as he 
meant they should develop; and it is a hindrance to teach 
men to wait for that elapse of divine stimulus which is every 
day given to each one, and which needs only to be accepted 
to be enjoyed. If it is accepted in small things, it develops 
itself more and more, shining brighter and brighter unto the 
perfect day. 

So then, my mission to. you this morning is ended. My 
discourse is delivered, the drift of which is, that every man 
must needs be born at zero, and go up tlie scale ; that every 
man must needs begin at the lowest point and develop up- 
ward and come to himself at the farther end of life. Nature 
does not lie at the point where men begin : it lies at the 
point where, with the best education, they end. It lies in 
that which we are capable of coming to — not in that primi- 
tive condition from which we came. My nature is not be- 
hind me : it is before me. It is what I can unfold into. 
That is my true self. Every living creature is competent to 
become better, wiser, stronger, nobler than he has been. It 
is for every One of you to enter that higher life, the king- 
dom of God ; and you are to enter it not self-sufficient. If 
you enter the church, you are to enter it as little children, 
saying, *^I need help, succor, inspiration." You are to enter 
it, if at all, that you may live better here and hereafter. 

May God give you grace, every one of you, no't to throw 
away even occasional good thoughts. Tiaey may not be suf- 
ficient to make up a perfect character ; but they are sufficient 
to help you, and to enable you to help others. Do not de- 
spise the least things that tend or point in the right direction. 
If you but feel an impulse to li\e better in your reighbor- 



128 ''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 

hood and to do something for those around about you, by 
improving the road, by repairing the sidewalk, by being pub- 
lic-spirited generally, cherish that impulse ; strive to benefit 
your fellow-men. Be generous. Do not retail current slan- 
ders in the community. Study the things which make for 
peace. Have more pity for those who suffer. If the impulse 
of prayer comes to you ; if your darlings are carried to the 
grave, or your wealth or honor is fading from you, and 
your whole soul is lifted up toward something you know not 
what, do not throw away this experience. There is nothing 
that lifts you from animalism and above this wicked world 
that you can afford to put your foot upon. If you wisely 
heed such things and augment them, they will lead you to 
those higher experiences out of which you shall see God. 

Dearly beloved, we shall not meet again in the flesh. "We 
go our several ways. May the dear love of Christ go with 
you all. You are beloved of Christ. My Father is your 
Father. My hope for heaven is your hope for heaven. In 
sickness, in discouragements, in disappointments, in sins, or 
in guilt, never give up hope in God. There is no other 
friend like him. Nobody loves you as he does. You do not 
know how to love and nourish your children with the ten- 
derness and kindness with which God loves and nourishes 
you. You are rich as long as you have God. You are poor 
without him. And wherever you may go, my last words to 
you, who may never meet me again, are, Hope in God. Your 
hope, your salvation, is in him. Hope in God! 



"AS A LITTLE CHILD.'* 129 

PRAYEE BEFORE THE SERMON. 

Drive away from before us, our Father, all clouds and darkness. 
Remember our ignorance and our weakness, and help us to lift up 
our thoughts in their better nature, and our feelings in their best 
estate, that we may bring to thee that with which thou art well 
pleased — our love and our gratitude. We rejoice that thou art made 
known to us through the household; and that those names which are 
dearest to us and most full of meaning, and that have never died out 
in all our memory, are the names of God. Thou art, blessed One, 
Father of every soul, whether he knows it or not. There is none that 
may not look up and say, Our Father. We rejoice that thou dost 
deal with us in affection, whether thou dost smile or dost frown; for 
whom thou lovest thou chasten est, and scourgest every son whom 
thou receivest. Thy chastisement is for our good, that we may be 
partakers of thy nature. 

We pray that we may have faith to believe in the inheritance of 
the future. May we have confidence that our life is moving toward 
a land which is transcendent in all excellence, in plenitude of power, 
where, when we drop these mortal bodies we shall come forth into 
glorious realities which but faintly appear in this life. Grant that 
we may feel that we are living toward summer. As they that are in 
the far north, and wait in the darkness of winter, and rejoice to see 
its coming, when the sun shall again rise upon their horizon with 
light ; so may we, wintered in time, look perpetually to death as sun- 
rise; and may our departure hence be our emergence in the land of 
light. For what are we here, poorly instructed, full of prejudice, 
with mistake upon mistake, and sin upon sin, buffeted and tossed 
about hither and thither, by circumstances which are stronger than 
our will, often bent and biased ? Behold, in our earthly estate, how 
imperfect we are, and how much of that which is at all good we owe, 
not to ourselves, not to the power of goodness in us, but to the influ- 
ences which surround us in thy providence, and in the whole frame- 
work of life in society. 

We beseech of thee, O Lord our God, since we are weak in all that 
is good, since we are so strong earthward, and so feeble heavenward, 
that thou wilt adjust thine administration over us according to our 
weakness and necessity through time. In the family the babes are 
most to us because they need most; and we should be most to thee if 
thou art oui Father, because we are poor, and weak, and needy, and 
afai off. And this is the relation of God in Christ Jesus, blessed be 
thy name, that thou art a God of grace, capable of suffering for those 
that need some one to suffer for them ; that thou art one that knows 
how to bear our burdens, and to carry our sorrows, and to make us 
better by receiving upon thine own self, in thy care and sympathy, 
and in thy nature, our troubles. Thou dost think, and wait, and 
iaboi, and mould, working in us to will and to do of thy good pleas- 
ure. We rejdice in this interpretation of a God adapted to the wants 
of men in this nascent state, just coming to intelligence, or just 
reaching forth out of intelligence into grace and moral beauty. We 
need longsuffering ; we need infinite instruction; we need forgive. 



130 "^S A LITTLE child:' 

ness and great eompassiori ; and this thou art. Like as a father piti- 
eth his children the Lord pitieth them that fear him. He knoweth 
our frame and remembereth that we are dust. 

We bless thee, O God of all light, that thou art also the God of all 
comfort. Thou art infinitely perfect. We cannot ascend to the con- 
ception of such royalty as is in thee. We are afar off, seeing dimly, 
and feeling but intimations of what thou art, and of what thy 
glory is. 

O Lord our God, we rejoice that thou wilt overflow and fill up 
every imperfect conception, and that thou wilt be infinitely better 
than any goodness that we ever thought of ; infinitely more tender 
than any tenderness that we have ever known ; infinitely more faith- 
ful than any fidelity that we have ever seen; infinitely more royal 
than any royalty that the earth has ever witnessed. How great is 
thy power and how great is thy wisdom must needs appear from 
the world that is without; but that which is thy power and thy 
wisdom, that which is thy glory, thy disposition, thy real life, thy 
pitying care, thy wonderful power of making happy those that are in 
thy household— who shall tell us of these things ? When we come to see 
thee as thou art, and not as thou hast been framed to us as one that 
dwells in the external world; when we have dropped earth-born 
terms, and we behold thee in thine innermost being, all heaven will not 
contain thy glory. Then, all that are present, and we among them, 
must needs break forth into transports of gladness, and sing that 
new song which ascribes honor, and power, and glory unto thee. 
And still, and forever more, tnou wilt lead us on, loving and beloved. 
More and more thou wilt develop the soul that is with thee, and pre- 
pare it for higher duties, for more glorious labors. We are sons 
of God, but it doth not yet appear" what we shall be. We know not 
the meaning of it.. When our coronation comes, what the robe shall 
be, or the sceptre, or the harp, or the joy, or the employment, or the 
ways of life, we know not; but we know that thou wilt be exceeding 
abundantly more than we can conceive of here. It hath not entered 
into the heart of man to conceive of the glories that thou hast laid up 
for those who love thee. 

We pray that we may have faith in these things even as those in 
winter have faith that the summer will come ; or as those in the midst 
of storms know that sunshine will return. May we believe that the 
future is full of refinement, and intelligence, and purity, and fidelity, 
and all imaginable experiences of gladness and peace, which are not 
permitted to earth, and which men cannot receive here. In faith 
and in hope of the blessedness which is beyond may we be willing to 
bear the cross, and take upon ourselves burdens, and cares, and sor- 
rows which scour our pride. May we be willing to be disciplined 
now, that by and by we may be lifted up into thine ethereal 
presence. 

May we rejoice in that providence of God which knows all our 
wants and administers to all our necessities. Be pleased, we beseech 
of thee, to bless all who are in thy presence according to their cir- 
cumstances. Grant thy blessing to those who are advanced in life, 
and drawing near to the overlooking mountain, and beholding afar 



''AS A LITTLE CHILD.'' 131 

off the promised land. May they, unlike thy servant of old, feel 
that their footsteps are soi^ff down to the Jordan, and that they 
shall pass over and behold the beauteous light of promise ; and may 
the shining? of the coming glory irradiate their faces before they pass 
out of our sight. 

Look with compassion, we pray thee, upon those who are bearing 
the burdens of life. May they strive to serve thee in their daily 
duties, and endeavor in all things to be more and more conformed to 
the pattern of Jesus Christ. "VYe pray that they may be diligent in 
business, and fervent in spirit, serving the Lord. May they resist 
temptations to sordidness, and selfishness, and pride, and all things 
that are" unlovely. May they fight the good fight in the midst 
of their daily avocations, and so become more like God. 

We pray that those who are advancing into the midst of the fierce 
experiences of mature life may find themselves confirmed in virtue, 
growing more and more steadfast, holding fast to their ideals of 
purity, and integrity, and truth, and justice. Let them never be 
ashamed of the heartswells and exultations which come from faith 
and hope, and the prospect' of nobler living. And we pray that as 
they meet the storms and trials of life they may be as good soldiers 
who go forth amidst rejoicings and bannered display to the field of 
actual warfare, where with hardship and ten thousand forms of 
aggravated suffering they still maintain patriotism and manhood. 

And may the young that go forth into the battle of life remember 
that thus they are to be made warriors and heroes. Wilt thou give 
them integrity and faith. May they believe in truth, in fidelity, in 
heroism, in the spirit land, in the presence of God, in the loving 
angels that surround them, in all things that are full of brightness, 
and hope, and promise. May they never become selfish. May they 
never cast themselves into the slough of worldliness. May they 
never be content with the husks that the swine eat. May the divine 
Spirit guide them in all their ways. May they have longings for 
things high and noble. May their lives not be disfigured by things 
low and gross. May they rise above temptations, and pursue the 
right ways. We pray that all their joys and hopes, all their sorrows 
and sadnesses, may be sanctified by the Spirit of God to prepare 
them for better living here and nobler triumphs hereafter. 

Accept the thanksgiving of those who, this morning, desire to 
draw nea^ with thank-offerings. How many instances come up 
before the minds of thy servants of thy sparing mercies, and of deliv- 
erances from impending dangers ! How many parents think of their 
children dead, and are grateful to thee for thy kindness to them 
in the most trying exigences of their life! And we pray, if any 
come looking back upon children gone from them, or scattered 
throughout the world, that thou wilt sanctify to them their memory 
and their affection for them. If there are those whose children are 
about them, whom they are teaching, and on whose account they 
are often in great sorrow, and disappointment, and surprise, wilt 
thou grant that they may yet be steadfast, full of faith, and hold 
fast to the promises of God, and never despair. We pray, if there be 
those who are but beginning to present their children to the Lord, 



T 



132 "^-S A LITTLE CHILD.'* 

and. who enter upon life with them, that they may feel this day the 
blessing of God resting upon them ; and may their children become 
dearer to them because they are dear to God ; and may they see upon 
their faces, not alone the light of earthly sweetness, but also the 
light of coming glory; and may they put more and more holy 
thoughts into the rearing of their offspring, and set them against the 
background of the eternal world so that they may shine upon them 
as stars shine from the other side ; and may their children be brought 
up in all love, and with a nobler sense of rectitude than that with 
which they themselves were brought up. 

We pray that thou wilt sanctify alJ our affections. May all our 
ways be directed in the light of that great undiscovered realm of the 
soul for which there is no language, where so much of our life passes, 
but where we have no communion and no fellowship. Sanctify the 
experiences of our life. Sanctify our silent sufferings. Sanctify all 
our aspirations, and hopes, and longings, and sorrows that come 
rolling, we know not how nor from whence, by celestial influences. 
PreDare us thus by joy and by sorrow, and measure thou both 
of them to us. Send us such schoolmasters as thou dost please, 
to make us better and better through our weakness and through our 
strength, until we are ripe; and then may the sickle flash and the 
reaper come, and may we go home with harvest songs sounding in 
our ears, garnered into the eternal heritage of our God. 

And to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit shall be praises ever- 
more. Amen. 



PRAYEE AETER THE SERMON. 

Thott best and most beloved in heaven, thou Father of all good- 
ness and God of all grace and consolation, breathe upon the souls in 
this presence to. make them discontented with themselves, discon- 
tented with their shortcomings, with their imperfections, with all 
that is wrong. Breathe hope into their hearts, that they may every 
one feel, in spite of all the past and its besetments, that there is for 
them a better life and a nobler manhood; breathe a spirit of tender- 
ness into all that they may live together affianced in nobler friend- 
ship. We pray for the blessing of Almighty God upon every soul, 
upon all those that are dear to each one of us, upon all our house- 
holds and all the consecrated hopes therein. We pray for our 
beloved land, and for all the nations of the earth. O Lord, how long ? 
Behold the roarbig misery of the world that groans and travails in 
pain; behold the fightings, the bloodshed, the terrible disasters and 
the speechless sufferings; behold around the globe how few know 
thee and how many are besotted. How long, O Lord, how long? 
Bring in the bright day when no man shall need to say to his neigh- 
bor, Know thou the Lord, but when every man shall know him from 
the greatest to the least. Cut short the time, make haste, thou that 
dwellest in the infinitude of strength, and bring to pass the latter- 
day glory when the new heaven and the new earth shall come 
in which dwelleth righteousness. And to thy name shall be the 
praise, forever and forever. Amen. 



txbut^ 



OF 



axnxn^ "MxR^atx. 



T. 

PAUL'S Idea of Love. 



HYMN. 

(PLTMOITTH COIiliECTION, NO. 770.) 

Must Jesus bear the cross alone, 

And all the world go free? 
No, there's a cross for every one, 

And there's a cross for me. 

How happy are the saints above, 
Who once went sorrowing here ; 

But now they taste unmingled love, 
And joy without a tear. 

The consecrated cross I'll bear, 
Till death shall set me free, 

And then go home my crown to wear- 
For there's a crown for me. 



I. 

PAUL'S Idea of Love. 



Satukday Morning, Sept. 5, 1874. 
Lesson: 1 Cor. xiii. 

In looking at the way in which the apostles preached 
Christ, we are very apt to seek for a mere literal, verbal, 
textual agreement between the Master and his disciples ; 
but the spirit of Christ and the apostles is a great deal 
more remarkable than identity. Our Saviour never, under 
any circumstances, despised institutions, or laws, or usages ; 
bnt he everywhere refused to make them idolatrous. He 
everywhere treated them as if they were subservient to the 
spiritual man, and to the spiritual wants of men. He 
never despised the Sabbath day ; but when the Sabbath 
was so used that it oppressed men he condemned it, be- 
cause man is more important than the Sabbath. He obey- 
ed laws, recognized symbols, attended worship, observed 
rituals ; and yet all these were, in his hands, made instru- 
ments for ministration to the inward wants of men. 

Now came the apostles, preaching the new kingdom ; but 
they did not break up the Jewish Church ; they did not 
attack that church ; they never went out of it ; they lived 
and died in it ; they gave their adhesion to all Jewish ideas, 
except when these came in conflict with the spiritual develop- 
ment of men ; then, like their Master, they set them at 
naught and defied them. They gave themselves for man, 
and for man in his immortal part. 

Thus, in the 12th of 1st Corinthians, Paul discusses all 
the physical phenomena that arose in the experience of the 
early Christians. The speaking of tongues, the working 
of miracles, the power of interpretation, gifts — of healing. 



138 PAUL'S IDEA OF LOVE. 

of instructing, of witnessing, of every kind — these are 
all treated with respect and honor ; and after he has gone 
through the whole he says, '* Coyet earnestly the best of all 
these gifts ; and yet show I unto you a more excellent way." 
The church, its ordinances, its days of observance, its rituals, 
its government and its intellectual instruction, are all of 
them excellent, and some of them are better than others ; 
and we ought to covet the best of them : yet, over against 
the church as a physical organization, and over against the 
instructing institutions of the church, I show you ^' a more 
excellent way." Well, what is that way ? It is the develop- 
ment, in the individual heart and soul, of the great over- 
ruling law of beneficence and love. 

"Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and 
have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal." 

By the love which is here spoken of (*^ charity" is a poor 
translation) is not meant personal attraction and personal 
inter-sphering, but that whole temper of mind in which one 
desires the good of all men, and yearns for them, and sym- 
pathizes with them. It is that state in which one soul is a 
benefaction to other souls, and in which its light is to men 
as is daylight to those who are weary of watching in the 
night. 

" Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all myster- 
ies, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could 
remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I 
bestow all my goods to feed the poor [as a kind of bribe to eternity 
to let me in finally], and though I give my body to be burned [as 
many and many a fanatic has done] and have not love, it profiteth 
me nothing." 

Here are men going about and saying, ''You must be 
agreed in doctrine ; you must accept ordinances ; you must 
observe rules and regulations ; oh ! this lax preaching will 
never do ; you must have the foundations laid strong ; you 
must see to it that you do not come short of the exact truth ; 
you must take things as they have been handed down to you ; 
for a systematic view of Christianity is indispensable;" but 
Paul rises up and says, ''These are good for some things, 
but without love (which is the very thing that men do not 
teach or cultivate with anything like the earnestness they 



PAUL'S IDEA OF LOVE. 139 

bestow on their dogmas and forms, and which is not gen- 
erally possessed) they are just nothing." 

" Love suffereth long, and is kind ; love envieth not; love vaunt- 
eth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself uncivilly [that 
is, it is polite], seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh 
no evil ; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth ; beareth 
all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. 
Love never faileth [it is not meant that love is never out of patience, 
but that it is one of those qualities which never waste away by the 
changes of time or the world]; but whether there be prophecies, they 
shall fail [because they belong to the mutable state] ; whether there 
be tongues, they shall cease [they have ceased]; whether there be 
knowledge [that is, philosophy], it shall vanish away. For [and this 
is the reason] we know in part, and prophecy in part [truth is not 
wholly developed ; we know it but in fragments ; our best knowledge 
is only speculative]; but when that which is perfect is come, then 
that which is in part shall be done away." 

To illustrate this, he says : 

" When I was a child I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
thought as a child ; but when I became a man I put away childish 
things." 

It is as if he had said, ''When I became a man, and 
looked on all the notions which I had when I was a little 
child, I laughed, and pushed them away as imperfect." And 
so men who in this world regard certain things as important, 
and are positive of them, and persecute each other about 
them, though they do not understand them except in spots 
— these men, in the other and higher life, will see that their 
proudest knowledge here was but shreds and patches. The 
ideas of spiritual things which we have in this world are poor 
and meager and imperfect, as compared with those which we 
will have in the other world. 

♦'For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face; 
now I know in part, but then shall I know even as also I am known. 
And now [as distinguished from these transient states that are rela- 
tive to time and growth], aMdeth Faith, Hope, Love, these three; 
but the greatest of these is Love." 



Question : What is the meaning of " Believeth all things " ? 

Me. Beechek : It means the aptitude of mind to accept 
everything that is good in others. There is one state of 
mind in which, when you present a favorable view of a per- 
son, people will look across to each other and wag their heads. 



140 PAUL'S IDEA OF LOVE, 

as much as to say : ' * Oh ! yes, you are shallow ; you are 
taken in easily ; there is a reason for all that ; you do not 
suppose he is as good as he seems to be, do you ?" There are 
some unbelieving people ; but a true state of love tends to 
accept things for what they appear to be. Not that it is 
blind ; not that it is easily hoodwinked ; but its prevailing 
tendency is to believe good things of all people. 

Question: In conversation with a gentleman, I referred him to 
this chapter, and he said : " Don't you see that in this very chapter 
the passage, ' Belie veth all things,' refers to the regular orthodox 
faith, and means that a man shall have a correct belief?" 

Mr. Beecher : Well, the question of mere intellectual, 
speculate belief is settled here : 

" Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all myster- 
ies and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, and have not 
love, I am notfiing.'^ 

What in New England we mean by orthodoxy, is a correct 
collocation of facts and ideas into a system of correct' theol- 
ogy. Now, Paul says: ^^I do not despise these things at 
all ; none of them are despicable ; but if you have these 
things, and have not a glowing, burning feeling of love, 
they are absolutely worthless. " People, however, cannot un- 
derstand that a thing may be good if it is governed by a 
particular disposition, and worthless if it is not governed by 
that disposition. 

To be sure that Paul is speaking of matters of disposition 
and not of belief, let us look at his phrases more in detail. 
Take the words which immediately precede these: ^^Doth 
not behave itself uncivilly." That passage refers to gentle- 
ness, embellished intercourse. 

'^Seeketh not her own," this means that love is disinter- 
ested in everything it does. 

'^ Is not easily provoked "—that is, not quick-tempered, 
nor irritable. It does not go off at a flash. 

'^ Thinketh no evil." This does not mean, thinketh no 
evil of itself, but thinketh no evil of others ; is not prone to 
see the bad side. 

^^Kejoiceth not in iniquity." There is not a village or 
a neighborhood in which persons are not drawn, by a sort of 



PAUL'S IDEA OF LOVE. 141 

epicurean relish, to where severe things are said, where people 
are discussed, and where, on the whole, the dark side of 
things is generally dwelt upon. There is a kind of zest 
which men have in thinking of others and finding fault with 
them, judging them critically, and discovering reasons for 
supposing that they are not quite so good as they make people 
believe they are, adding fact to fact as the basis of forming 
such a judgment, giving them an unfavorable portrait, and, 
on the whole, chewing that cud of thought about them which 
involves, more or less, the malign elements. 

*'Eejoiceth in the truth" — iu things as they are at their 
best. 

'^Beareth. all things." No matter what people do, no 
matter what they say, no matter how much they put upon 
you or put you about, the true spirit of love is sweet, and 
quiet, and takes all the vexatious part of social intercourse 
just as a traveler does the inconvenience which he meets on 
his way. He does not think of fighting the storm, or whin- 
ing about it ; he is in it, and he must go through it, so he 
makes up his mind to that, and does not complain. It is the 
same in disarranged domestic or neighborhood affairs. The 
true disposition bears what comes upon it under all circum- 
stances. 

'^ Believeth all things." The right spirit tends to believe 
all things. It does not believe with credulity ; nevertheless, 
trust is its prevailing disposition. 

Count Cavour, the ablest statesman in modern Europe, 
Bismarck not excepted, said one thing which, from a states- 
man's point of view, coincides with this deep interior life 
which Paul sets forth. He said, as the result of his expe- 
rience, that he believed the man who trusted men would 
make fewer mistakes than the man who distrusted them. 
Diplomacy has always gone on the theory of distrusting 
everybody, according to the principle of the Italian Machi- 
avelli ; but the result of Count Cavour's experience, though 
he was an Italian, was just the contrary. *^ Love believ- 
eth all things ;" and when the facts do not seem to square 
with belief it '^hopeth all things;" and when hope fails it 
^^ endureth all things." It is like the sun, which carries heal- 



142 PAUL'S IDEA OF LOVE. 

ing to the huncliback, to the maimed, to the sick, and which 
pours its light and warmth on man, woman, and child every- 
where. It is medicine for all, good and bad, strong and 
weak, high and low. Those that are bad it helps to be good, 
and those that are low it helps to rise, and hopes for them, 
and bears with them. Love is the all-healing divine spirit 
in the heart of man. 



PAUL'S IDEA OF LOVE, 143 



PRAYEE. 

OuB Father, we thank thee that thou hast interpreted thyself to 
us, not by the voice of thy thunder, nor by thy lightning, nor 
by those great agencies of power which make us tremble, but have 
in them no sympathy and no compassion. Thou art to us as we 
are to our children. We love them not without chastisement, not 
without fear, not without the infliction of pain in discipline; and 
whom thou lovest thou chastenest, and thou dost scourge the sons 
whom thou receivest. Thou art our Father, and art most intimate, 
near, helpful, patient, full of all goodness. When we behold what 
thou didst work in thy servant on earth, when we behold the illumi- 
nation which thou didst give to him, and the interpretation through 
him of the glory of the heart, and the realm and royalty of summer 
in the soul, we rejoice ; but how much greater art thou than he ! And 
how much beyond us is he ! 

We pray for the Spirit of God — not for inspiration, nor insight, 
nor wonder-working power, nor exaltation, nor rapture. We pray 
that we may have of that spirit which is in God, the Sufferer who 
lives to bear up the infant universe, and who, with the growing ages, 
is still the Burden Bearer, the Nurse, the Father. We pray that we 
may have that spirit which shall not demand that men shall serve 
and please us. As Christ pleased not himself, so may we please 
others, and not ourselves. We pray that we may in honor prefer 
one another. We pray that love may in us be a perpetual benefac- 
tion, an undying generosity, a constant beneficence, an endless power 
for good. May it not be in the experience of our moments of health 
and comfort that our affection is strong one for another. May love 
never fail with us. May it be the atmosphere which we breathe, in 
which we see, and through which the functions of our lives display 
themselves. May we be so caught into the innermost Spirit of God 
that there can be no Hell to us, and only Heaven — for where love is 
there is Heaven. 

Forgive our sins, our selfishness, our pride, our vanity, our bast- 
ings, our strifes, and our heedlessness from which others suffer. For- 
give the impatience and irritableness of our lives. Forgive our hope- 
lessness and shortsightedness by which we see time-things and not 
the greater things that lie beyond. 

Interpret to us each other. Interpret thyself to us by the daily 
events of our lives ; by thy providence ; by the great outward world 
in which we walk; and finally may we not see thee through these 
signs, and hints, and symbols, but may we behold thee as thou art, 
and know even as we are known. Then, in the ransomed state, 
with joy unutterable, we will cast our crowns and bow ourselves at 
thy feet, redeemed by love, and saved by love, forever and forever. 
Amen. 



1 



II. 

The Value of Mab'Kih'd. 



I 



HYMN. 

Plymottth Collection, No. 823. 

Walk in the light! so shalt thou know 

That fellowship of love 
His Spirit only can bestow 

Who reigns in light above. 

Walk in the light I and thou shalt find 

Thy heart made truly His, 
Who dwells in cloudless light enshrined. 

In whom no darkness is. 

Walk in the light ! and thou shalt own 

Thy darkness passed away, 
Because the Light has on thee shone 

In which is perfect day. 

Walk in the light! and e'en the tomb 

No fearful shade shall wear ; 
Glory shall chase away its gloom. 

For Christ hath conquered there. 

Walk in the light! thy path shall be 
Peaceful, serene and bright: 

For God, by grace, shall dwell in thee. 
And God himself is light. 



II. 

The Value of Mankind. 



Tuesday Mori^ing, Sept. 8, 1874. 

I will read a few verses from the second chapter of Mark : 

" And it came to pass, that, as Jesus sat at meat in his house [that 
is, in the house of the ruler who had entertained him], many publicans 
and sinners sat also together with Jesus and his disciples ; for there 
were many, and they followed him." 

As we learn from the other evangelists, he had been 
preaching in a most clear and convincing manner ; and the 
moral sense of the great crowd, and especially of the more 
wicked and despised part of it, was profoundly stirred. It 
was one of those times when men were drawn to him, — ^for 
he had, evidently, hours when everybody seemed to be at- 
tached to him. He had lofty moods, moods of elevation, 
when all appeared to be afraid of him ; but he also had 
moods that seemed to draw every one to him. One day, 
he was invited by one of the rulers to go and dine in his 
house. There was great enthusiasm among those that fol- 
lowed him. Many of them were outcasts. They were ir- 
religious people. They were what the immoral classes are 
among us. Following him they were received in such a way, 
and his influence was such, that they sat down together with 
him and his disciples. That word together is very emphatic. 

Everywhere, and in the East especially, the act of peo- 
ple eating together is as full of meaning as it can be. 
He that eats salt and bread under the roof of an Arab, or of 
one belonging to many of the old tribes, becomes sacred to 
him. Although among the Jews there was not the same 
simplicity which belonged to desert hospitality, yet that feel- 
ing was very strong among them. 

Well, when Christ taught the publicans and sinners no- 



W- 



148 THE VALUE OF MANKIND. 

body said anything about that. When they thronged about 
him, and he showed them a little attention, the Pharisees be- 
gan to murmur a little. When they sat down with him, and 
he ate bread with them, the Pharisees said unto his disciples, 
'^How is it that he eateth and drinketh with publicans and 
sinners?" They could not understand that. There they 
stumbled. 

Here was a young man who might have had a very ad- 
mirable career ; there was every opportunity open before 
him ; but he was throwing himself away on this company ; 
he was taking no pains about his influence ; he was running 
over the sacredest feelings of the Jewish mind — for if there 
was anything more important than another to the Jews it 
was that they should not be defiled. They therefore scrupu- 
lously held themselves aloof from the unwashed and the low. 
It was about as much as a man's life was worth to break 
through the public opinion and do things that were p]*o- 
scribed ; and that Christ should plunge right into this vio- 
lation of the proprieties of his class and the moral sentiment 
of his church, was more than they could bear. It was carry- 
ing things to an extent which they could not stand. 

You will observe that the Saviour did not do this for the 
sake of hurting anybody. He did not do it impudently or in 
a blazing way. It happened of itself, and he accepted it as 
it fell out ; and his reply opened the whole view of the intent 
of his mission. 

*' When Jesus heard it [for when there is anything against a man 
there will always be somebody to come and tell him of it], he saith 
unto them, They that are whole have no need of the physician, but 
they that are sick. I came not to call the righteous [probably look- 
ing at the Pharisees], but sinners to repentance." 

It is as if he had said, ^'I came from heaven with my 
God-nature, that wherever it went it should heal men, and 
not pain nor destroy them." 

Healing may imply pain-inflicting ; but it is pain inflict- 
ed not to exhibit or vindicate justice, or law, but help- 
fulness. The most magnificent vindication of rectitude is 
to bring a man back from wrong to right. If you can bring 
him back by tenderness and kindness, do it ; but if you have 



THE VALVE OF MANKIND. 149 

to inflict pain, do that. To rectify a soul, to bring it to 
life and honor again, is the divinest act which is possible in 
this world. 

It»is at that point, I think, that our Eoman notions con- 
stantly tend to override the spirit of domesticity which was 
the central spirit of Christ's kingdom. The yindication of 
law and public justice is essentially the Eoman idea. What 
was regarded as the highest type of Eoman character was 
hard, invincible, vindictive ; but in the mind of Jesus the 
noblest attribute of the soul was love, fulfilling righteousness, 
and bringing men back to repentance. 

Then comes another case : 

*' And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast : and 
they come and say unto him. Why do the disciples of John and of the 
Pharisees fast, hut thy disciples fast not?" 

That is as if a rigorous Sunday-keeper should come into 
the family of an active, cheerful Christian man, and seeing 
that Sunday was a day on which they walked, and talked, 
and smiled, and laughed, and were joyous, and were deeply 
religious and very religiously active, should say to them, '^ I 
do not understand how it is that you can seem to be a good 
and happy man and so run over the Sabbath, not worship- 
ing it nor observing it." 

Now, fasting had become a kind of idolatrous usage. 
The Jews attached to it a certain value in itself. If a man 
is so inordinate an eater that he cannot really get through 
the clouds and come to religious ideas except by reducing 
his body through abstinence, it is a good thing for him to 
fast ; but if a man is all the time in the mood which men 
fast to produce, what is the use of his fasting ? 

" And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the hridechamber 
fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the 
bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. But the days will come 
when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall 
they fast in those days." 

It is a time of joy with them, and why should they make 
it a time of sorrow ? When it is a time of sorrow they wiU 
not want to eat and drink. 

Then came a third instance : 

" And it came to pass, that he went through the corn-fields on the 



150 THE VALUE OF MANKIND, 

Sablbath-day ; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears 
of corn. And the Pharisees said unto him. Behold, why do they on 
the Sabbath-day that which is not lawful ?" 

It was not lawful with them to work on the Sabbath day. 
It is not in our Puritan interpretation of the Bible lawful to do 
anything on Sunday, except to be sober, and worship, and so 
on; but the Jews made the Sabbath a cheerful day. Dinners, 
if cooked on Saturday, were perfectly lawful to be eaten in a 
festive way on Sunday. Hilarity after the religious ser^dces 
of the day was unquestionably admissible. But men must 
not work. That indicates one of the ways in which the 
Pharisees refined. They would say that a man must not 
walk on Sunday with a pair of shoes that had iron nails in 
them. "Why ? Because if, walking on the grass, the stroke 
of his feet should shell out the seeds from the grass-heads, 
it would be equivalent to threshing ; and that would be 
work. Another example was this : they said, ^' You have a 
right to lead your horse to water if you take a short halter ; 
but if you take a long halter you will have to carry it, and so 
you will work." There were a hundred such absurdities. 
Another was in regard to traveling on Sunday. Sometimes 
the good old saints would want to go out of the city and 
spend the day in the neighborhood. A Sabbath day's jour- 
ney (the shortest of all journeys) was, among the Jews, a 
certain distance from one's home ; and the Jewish rabbis de- 
clared that a man's home was where he had set up rafters. 
And so if they wanted to leave the city on Sunday they 
would go and set up rafters within the distance of a Sabbath 
day's journey of the place where they wanted to go, and 
would call that a homestead, and then by going a Sabbath 
day's journey they would be where they wanted to go. They 
fixed the law very strict, and then dodged it. The land was 
full of such little crotchets of Pharisaic interpretation, and 
they became ridiculous. 

But these particularities sprang from a noble source ; for 
when the Jews were carried away captive there was a likeli- 
hood that the Hebrews would intermarry, and that the people 
would become mixed. So the doctors began to interpret the 
law with new adaptations, and there were a thousand little 



THE VALUE OF MANKIND. 151 

peculiarities which were designed to separate the Jews from 
the heathen. The word Pharisee means separation. The 
design was to keep the Jews from mixing with the heathen. 
It was by that minnte discipline that the Jews were held 
together, and brought back to the promised land ; but in 
their new circumstances they did not spiritualize or liberalize. 
They stuck to these old peculiarities. 

"He said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when 
he had need, and was an hungered, he and they that were with him ? 
how he* went into the house of God in the days of Ahiathar the high 
priest, and did eat the shew-hread, which was not lawful to eat but 
for the priests, and gave also to them that were with him ?" 

This illustration is exceedingly strongs because it was as 
near to sacrilege in the eyes of the people as it could possibly 
be. And Christ says, ^' Necessity of this kicd knows no law." 
David took the shew-bread to saye himself from starvation. 
The altar, the temple, and the bread were sacred in the eye 
of the law and were not to be profaned by ordinary and un- 
consecrated men; yet all of these sacred things were made for 
man's benefit; and when the royal leader of the whole people 
must save himself, is altar, or temple, or bread, or anything 
else as important as human life ? Everything is to give way 
to manhood ; that is the regnant element in human life ; and 
no priest, nor church, nor ordinance, nor seryice, nor cere- 
mony is so sacred that in his great emergencies man may not 
make them serve him. That was the doctrine that Christ 
taught. Manhood sprang from God ; and all material con- 
ditions, all governments, all laws, all institutions, all usages 
in society must giye way for its essential safety. 

" And he said unto them. The Sahbath was made for man, and 
not man for the Sabbath ; therefore, the Son of man is Lord also of 
the Sabbath." 



152 THE VALUE OF MANKIND. 



PRAYER. 

We thank thee, our Father, that we are permitted to bow down 
together, this morning, and call thee by that name which opens to us 
all the channels of remembrance, all the sweetness of our childhood. 
We thank thee for the love that was around about us in the family ; 
and when we call thee "Father," we think likewise of our mother. 
We think of the days of blessedness, and peace, and +rust, and rest, 
which we have had ; and the heavens are benign, and the storms are 
all gone, and the light that abides with thee comes forth genial and 
warm — comforting us— for thou hast been proclaimed as a God of 
power, armed with the sword, till men look to behold the heavens 
scowling upon them. O Sun of righteousness, with healing in thy 
beams, break through the darkness that hath been spread over thee, 
and let men know that above every other place in the universe there 
is faith, and love, and yearning, and sympathy in the bosom of God. 
By as much as thou art better than we are, by so much dost thou 
transcend us in the power of loving, and in the healing power of 
love. 

We pray that thou wilt so shine in upon us that we may under- 
stand thee by having something of thy nature incorporated in us, 
that the leaven of the divine soul may be in us, and abide in us, 
sweetening every cut-going, tempering every passion, and giving 
hope and courage where there has been disobedience and infraction 
of thy law. May we not think of thee as a magistrate. May we 
scorn to think that we are walking on an exact line of law, and that 
unless we obey to the letter we are condemned. May we feel toward 
thee as, in its stumblings, and pettishness, and waywardness, the 
child feels toward its mother, in the arms of whose love it still looks 
for rescue and release. May we ever be near to thee in our bright 
hours of hope and joy, and nearest of all in our hours of darknsss, 
and despondency, and self-accusation. May we rise up against all 
temptations to evil, and may we know that all the burdens which 
the conscience bears are by reason of a lower manhood in us, and by 
reason of our adhesion to the physical and material world. And in 
proportion as we rise toward the nature of God, may we come into 
that state in which trust, and faith, and hope, and love shall abide in 
us ; for they are of thee, and are like thee ; and thine is that influence 
which is divine, which death shall not sweep away, and which shall 
grow in the other and brighter sphere, and perfect us. 

Bless us, we pray thee, this morning and this day, and make it a 
peaceful and glad day. May we be helpful one to another, bearing 
each other's burdens. May we not rejoice in iniquity; may we 
rejoice, rather, in the truth ; and in all things may we walk as disci- 
ples of Christ, pleasing him, and so being ourselves well pleased. 

We ask these mercies in the adorable name of Jesus, to whom, 
with the Father and the Spirit, shall be praises everlasting. Amen. 



III. 

The Chastisemeistts of Love. 



i 



HYMN. 

(Pltmouth Collection, no. 733.) 

From every stormy wind that blows. 
From every swelling tide of woes. 
There is a calm, a sure retreat, 
'Tis found beneath the mercy-seat. 

There is a place where Jesus sheds 
The oil of gladness on our heads, 
A place of all on earth most sweet ; 
It is the blood-bought mercy-seat. 

There is a scone where spirits blend, 
Where friend holds fellowship with friend, 
Though sundered far, by faith we meet 
Around one common mercy-seat. 

There, there on eagles wings we soar. 
And sense and sin seem all no more; 
And heaven comes down our souls to greet, 
And glory crowns the mercy-seat. 

Oh ! let my hand forget her skill, 
My tongue be silent, cold and still, 
This throbbing heart forget to beat, 
If I forget the mercy-seat. 



i 



III. 
The Chastisements of Loye. 



Wednesday Morning, Sept. 9, 1874. 
Lesson : Heb. xii. 1-13. » 

I will read a portion of the 12tli Chapter of the Book of 
Hebrews. 

After mentioning, in the 11th Chapter, a long line of 
Jewish worthies who had by faith endured, and inherited the 
promises, mentioning all the names that were notable, the 
writer says : 

*' Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so ^reat a 
cloud of witnesses (such as those that he has been enumerating), let 
us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us; 
and let us run with patience the race that is set before us." 

They that are in trouble are certainly encouraged and 
comforted by looking back and seeing that others have been 
in the same trouble, and that they have by patient endur- 
ance overcome it. The writer, going through a whole gal- 
lery of pictures, pointing to these noble personages, says, 
'' They all suffered, endured and gained victories ; and let us 
run with patience the same race that they ran" — with this in 
addition, which they had not done : 

" Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith." 

As ^^ Alpha and Omega" (the first and last letters of 
the alphabet) are terms applied to Christ, as standing for all 
that is between them, and all that can be made out of them ; 
as he is represented as the All in all ; so we have him here 
spoken of as 'Hhe Author (the Beginner) and Finisher of 
our faith." The Sayiour is presented to us in the light of 
One in whom our heart, our affection, our trust and our con- 
fidence may be absolutely buried, as a Person who is so large 
and worthy and noble that men love him with all their souls. 



156 THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE. 

To the young mother, with her first child, there is noth- 
ing of sound or sight that happens which, in some way or 
other, is not connected with the child oyer which she has 
poured her life. She lives in that child. All her senses are 
absorbed in it. 

There is a companionship of love, in which one absolutely 
includes another. It is that union of souls which is spoken 
of by our Master, where he says that we are to be one as he 
is one with the Father. There is such an absolute love of a 
man's soul that one is taken into another completely. 

" Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith ; who, 
for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the 
shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." 

There was his career, which had been in the beginning an 
argument of doubt and of fear, turned right about when bet- 
ter understood, and made to be an argument of strength and 
encouragement to all who are trying to live a Christian life. 

"For consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners 
against himself, lest ye he wearied and faint in your minds." 

That is the very trouble with which people meet. They 
get tired. They do not want to abruptly break away from 
their religious faith, or hope of immortality ; but somehow 
they are spent ; their mind refuses to come up to their pur- 
pose ; day after day it gets more and more colorless ; their 
faith leaks out ; and they lose all vivid religious impressions. 

"Ye have not resisted unto blood, striving against sin (as he did, 
and as did many of the worthies that are mentioned), and ye have 
forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto chil- 
dren. My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint 
when thou art rebuked of him ; for whom the Lord loveth he chas- 
ten eth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure 
chastening, God deal eth with you as with sons; for what son is he 
whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, 
whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons." 

And now comes what would amount to the Jewish order 

of making a philosophical statement : 

• " Furthermore, we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected 
us, and we gave them reverence (we were not angry; on the other 
hand, we yielded obedience and reverential uplooking) ; shall we not 
much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits (as distin- 
guished from the father of the body) and live? For they verily for a 
few days chastened us after their own pleasure (that is to say, for 



THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE. I57 

peace in the family, for their own comfort, and for the maintenance 
of their authority) ; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers 
of his holiness." 

It is impossible for persons in life easily to answer the 
question, *' Why was this sent upon me ? What have I 
done ? Why did I deserye to have my child taken away ? 
Why was my property stripped from me ? Why was I placed 
in such circumstances ? What reason was there that I should 
be subjected to so much pain and suffering ?" The question 
is not what you have done. God's dealing is not of the na- 
ture of a penal sentence at all : it is rather in the nature of a 
remedy. The question is, " What has he done this for ? 
What use can I make of it ? How can I make this trouble a 
schoolmaster to me ? What part of my nature needs just 
this discipline ? How shall I bear it in such a way that I 
shall become broader and stronger, or softer and sweeter and 
gentler ? " 

We are not therefore to look back upon our troubles ; we 
are to look forward. They are material, they are instru- 
ments, that we are to fashion into a nature which shall be 
Christ in us, or such that, as it is here said, *^we maybe 
partakers of his holiness,'' so that the whole breadth of life 
everywhere, in secular work, social work, rehgious work, in 
youth, middle life, or old age, of every description, whether 
pleasurable or painful, are so many touches of that chisel in 
the hands of God by which he is shaping our features, and 
preparing to bring us forth into a form and beauty like his 
own. 

" Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble 
knees ; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame 
be turned out of the way ; but let it rather be healed." 

Paul is introducing a geographical picture of Palestine, 
in which were rocky paths over hills and through ravines ; 
and he is also introducing, without mentioning it, the shep- 
herd, who takes care of his flock, and chides them, and often 
strikes them, in order to bring them into the path, and save 
them from danger. 

The fact of our trouble should be looked at in this large 
light — not in a way to overwhelm or destroy us, but in a way 
simply to strengthen our hands, and give us more courage to 



158 THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE. 

start afresh, strong, and to make straight paths for our feet, 
that the lame may not be turned out of the way, but may 
rather be healed. 

Q. : Is there not a new element introduced in this command to 
make straight paths, that the lame t)e not turned out of the way? I 
think there is a ceitaiu allowance made for those that are lame. It 
seems to me that the design is to show that our lives are to be so 
ordered that these people, instead of being destroyed because they 
are lame, should be healed. 

Mk. Beechee : Precisely. I bold that all offices of love 
and goodness are medicinal to those who are not lovely nor 
good. If putting them to pain will, in your kind intention 
and in your right spirit, help them, then put them to pain ; 
but to put anybody to pain for wrong-doing, without any 
benefit to him or to those who are allied to him, is animal 
justice. Divine justice is to use pain, in the spirit of love, 
as a physician uses medicine, or as a surgeon uses the knife, 
always for healing. 

Remark : 1 think the office of divine justice is not only to heal or 
recall the individual evil-doer, but to have regard for the whole 
family, and consider how much they may suffer through him. 

Mr. Beecher : Exactly as the father and mother have to 
consider all the six children wben they are disciplining one ; 
but the discipline of the one for the sake of the others 
does not mean the casting out of that one. 

R. : It may be necessary to cast out the one for the sake of the 
others. 

Me. Beechee : That would be justified only in the ex- 
tremest cases. One thing is certain, that the parent who 
will not cast out an erring child, but endures untold suffer- 
ings on his account, strikes us as the noblest. 

R. : Ko, not when the other children are sacrificed by his mis- 
conduct. 

Me. Beechee ; The effect produced by the spectacle of 
father and mother cheerfully giving their whole life in suffer- 
ing for the reclamation of the one wayward child will be to 
lead the other children, as they come up, little by little to 
take hold and help ; and so the whole family will be knitted 
together on a common ground in the common attempt to 
rescue him that is fallen. 



THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE. I59 

R. : I am speaking of a case where one child is corrupting all the 
other children, and bringing them into antagonism to the parents, 
and breaking down their moral status. I think it is the duty of a 
parent, under such circumstances, to expose that child, and then 
separate him from the other children. 

Mr. Beecher : I can see that it might be necessary that 
the erring child should be separated from the other children ; 
but I cannot see why under any circumstances it should be 
necessary that the parent should entirely break away from 
the child. 

Q, : But suppose the child has set himself against the parent, 
suppose he has broken away from the parent, and suppose he is en- 
deavoring to corrupt the other children ? 

Mr. Beecher : There is an element which you do not 
take into consideration — namely, that all parents work from 
the standpoint of weakness, while God works from the stand- 
point of everlasting power. Parents have to take things as 
they understand them ; and being feeble of understanding, 
though strong of heart, they are obliged to resort to expe- 
dients ; and one parent pursues a line of discipline that 
others would not, according to circumstances. Here is a 
poor woman, with twelve children, who goes out to work by 
the day. Her neighbors say, ''It is better never to punish 
children corporally ; you ought always to reason with them, 
persuade them. Their wills ought to be educated." That 
is said by a dainty person who has but two children, four or 
five years apart, and has unbounded leisure to shield them 
and guide and direct them aright. But this poor woman, 
who does washing for a living, and sees her twelve children 
but once or twice a day, is obliged to use the capital with 
which she is endowed, and that is her right hand with a stick 
in it ; and although that is not the best way to bring them 
up, abstractly considered, it is the best way that she can 
bring them up. 

Now, in respect to earthly parents, what is best to be 
done is alwavs subordinated to the next thing — namely. What 
can these parents do ? What power have they ? Family 
government involves two elements : the need of the child 
and the competency of the parents — their will-power and 
their perseverance. We cannot reason from the weakness of 



160 THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE. 

men to the strength of God. Men are fallible and ignorant ; 
but so far as God is concerned he has infinite resources. He 
neyer slumbers nor sleeps. He has all knowledge and all 
power. The universe is in his hand. Therefore any reason- 
ing which is founded on human governments is misreasoning 
as applied to the divine government. I hold that there is 
but one theory of God's government in the universe that can 
justify an intelligent reverence and worship of God to those 
that think. If you choose to go on the ground of venera- 
tion, and take things as they are presented without analysis 
and reflection, that is well in its way ; but if you undertake 
to justify the ways of God toward men, and present the 
theory of moral government, you must take the brotherhood 
of God and apply it to his relations with men here and 
hereafter, in the whole length and breadth of their existence. 
The true theory of the government of God is that it is a 
government of goodness established to overcome evil in the 
universe, to rectify that which is wrong, and to make 
the crooked straight. 

R. : I should not have a doubt on that point if it were not for a 
doubt on another point — whether God is Mteraliy infinite in powei*. 
When we see that there was a man who lived in the boscm of 
Christ, who was his intimate friend, who was treated by him as a 
child when he was on earth, and who went away and sold his Saviour 
for a little money, it seems to us as though God had not supreme 
power over the human soul. It is said, "The light shineth in dark- 
ness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not." The light shone on 
Judas ; Jesus held him in his arms, and loved him dearly ; and Judas 
had not comprehension of Christ's nature. All he wanted was to 
make something out of the Saviour, when he thought he was going 
to have a kingdom ; and when he found that he was not, he thought 
he would sell him for what he could get. He said to himself, " I will 
sell him to these men. and he will pass out of their hands again, un- 
hurt, as on other occasions, and I will get the money, and he will get 
released." It would seem to show that with his great power, Christ, 
when he did all he could for Judas, could not save him. 

Me. Beechee : Well, this was not a plenary God. Those 
that hold the theory of the divinity of Christ believe that it 
was only the nature of God that could be exhibited by him, 
and not the full divine power ; because he subjected himself 
to the conditions of limitation. That he endured Judas, 
knowing from the beginning what he was, and treated him 



THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE. 161 

as lie treated the other disciples, and loved him as he loved 
them, is itself an indication of what I hold to be the general 
tenor of the divine government. That God interprets that 
government so is shown where he declares that he makes his 
sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the 
just and on the unjust ; and where he recommends us to for- 
give our enemies, and to treat kindly those who despitefully 
use us, that we may become his children ; thus basing his 
moral government on the general ground that whatever evil or 
aberration there is God is patient with it, and medicates it, 
and changes it as fast as it is susceptible of change, the pri- 
mary object being recuperation, and not destruction. 

R. : The history of Judas seems to indicate that there are some 
people who are incapable of understanding divine love, and that 
therefore they will he forever miserable. 

Me. Beecher : I cannot believe anything of the kind. 

R. : I think the love is the same in either case. 

Mr. Beecher : It carries you back to the thought that 
the moral Governor of the universe permits lower ignorant 
classes of men, without hindrance, to swarm upon the globe, 
and that they outnumber immeasurably the higher and intel- 
ligent classes. Consider the condition of the African and 
the Asiatic continents, to-day, where there are millions upon 
millions whose knowledge of moral truth is absolutely noth- 
ing. God has plenary power in the universe, and he permits 
this overwhelming tide to flow into the world and out of it 
again, year in and year out ; and you must give some account 
of an administration that allows this and then damns these 
persons. 

R. : He does not damn them : they do it themselves. 

Mr. Beecher : Then he stands by and looks on. 

R. : I mean people who have seen the good, who have known it, 
but who have resisted it. 

Mr. Beecher : It is very doubtful to me whether there 
are such people. 

R. : There seems to have been one — Judas. 

Mr. Beecher : Well, he was not with Christ much over 
a year. We do" not consider that if a child, after fifteen 



162 THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE, 

years of instruction by his parents, goes wrong, he is to be 

given up. Certainly not until they have expended their 

whole stock of moral influence upon him. They must have 

patience with him ; and after they have borne with him 

twenty-five years, if he still holds out, it begins to be a 

serious matter. 

R. : The Saviour says, " Have I not chosen you twelve, and one is 
a devil? " He viewed Judas, I think, judging from that expressiou, 
as very hopeless. 

Me. Beechee : So far as this life was concerned I think 
it was a pretty hopeless case ; but Judas was not farther 
from understanding Christ than John was. 

R. : I think he was. 

Me. Beechee : You recollect that when Christ was on 
his way to Jerusalem for the last time, and not long before 
his crucifixion, John wanted to call down fire from heaven 
upon the inhabitants of a Samaritan village because they 
would not receive Christ. If it was not a murderous and re- 
vengeful disposition that he manifested I do not know what 
v/ould be. John had lain in his bosom, and was certainly the 
most susceptible to the interior nature of Christ of any of 
the disciples ; and yet he had learned so little of that nature 
that when Christ was on his way to Jerusalem, for the last 
time, toward his crucifixion, he wanted these people destroyed 
because they slighted the Master. James and John, you 
know, were sons of thunder ; and they showed it pretty much 
all the way through their lives by their impetuosity. 

R. : Love is the most terrible thing in the world. 

Me. Beechee : Love with conscience and a good deal of 
combativeness is. 

Now, to come back from this instructive but somewhat 
wandering conversation, the tenor of the whole passage here 
is this : that according to the theory propounded in this 
twelfth chapter of Hebrews, trouble is not necessarily penal. 
It may spring from an evolution of natural law, or social 
liability in connection with individuals and communities and 
nations. Comprehensively viewed, all our trouble is per- 
mitted to come upon us for the same reason that we put an 
instrument on a grindstone. In the one case the object is to 



THE CHASTISE3IENTS OF LOVE. 1C3 

sharpen the instrument, and in the other case the object is to 
profit us, to enlarge us, to strengthen us, to make us richer. 
Looked at as a whole, the divine government is a scheme of 
joy and sorrow. In other words, the use of every faculty of 
the human soul is to prepare men for a higher sphere, for 
exaltation, and finally for such a similarity to the divine 
nature that they shall worthily be called sons of God. And 
we, in contemplating that eternal work, should not only take 
courage, but should do everything in our power to help those 
who are weaker than we, so that the lame may not be turned 
aside, but healed. 

In the time of Christ, the best men, according to the 
Jewish notion, the strictest, the most conscientious, and the 
most earnest religious people, were exceedingly proper, deny- 
ing themselves every day, putting themselves to the utmost 
expense and care in order to live better lives than other 
folks ; then they fell back on their goodness, and made it an 
imperative rule and measure, and criticised and condemned 
with scorn those who were poorer and weaker and wickeder 
than themselves ; and it was against this that Christ hurled 
denunciations that seemed more merciless than any others 
that he ever uttered. The selfishness of the moral facul- 
ties he treated as being a great deal wickeder than all the 
passions and vices and crimes of the animal nature. The 
wickedness of the lower feelings is greater than we know or 
think ; but the cruelty that men show in their thoughts and 
criticisms of their fellow men through the selfishness of their 
moral nature is more wicked still. Therefore, Christ said to 
the ruling class, *^The publicans and harlots shall enter the 
kingdom of God before you." 



164 THE CHASTISEMENTS OF LOVE. 



PRAYEE. 



AiiMiGHTY God, we pray that thou wilt give us light by which to 
live step Iby step. In the twilight of our career we are not yet horn, 
but are struggling for life. We do not know how we are made. We 
do not understand the mystery of those inward forces that are every 
day propelling us. We do not know how to balance the strong parts 
against the weak parts of our nature. We do not understand to-mor- 
row from to-day. We are children of the dust, and we bear our 
origin along with us. We are tempted ; we are buffeted ; we strive to 
maintain inward peace and rectitude of motive, and are assailed by 
storms from without, by sickness, and by a thousand troubles. 

Now, thou knowest our frame, aud thou rememberest that we 
are dust; and as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth 
them that fear him. We rejoice to believe that thou art a High- 
priest that dost look upon all men to succor them, and that thou dost 
enter into the holy of holies, even into the heavens above, not to 
separate thyself from thy followers upon earth, but that in the 
secret places of power thou mayest send holy injQiuenoes upon all 
that need. Thou art a high priest tempted in all points like as we 
are. No faculty in us is tried but that a like faculty in thee was 
tried, and thou knowest how to sympathize with our infirmities; and 
we rejoice to believe that thy providence is round about us; that 
thy thoughts are before us, and behind us, and over us, and that the 
care of no bird that flutters over her nest to feed her young, and the 
care of no mother who watches the cradle for her babe, is to be com- 
pared with God's tender care for us. 

May we not distrust thee because thy movements are so vast and 
ao voluminous, because they deal with such myriad creatures, and 
set the laws of nature to be nurses ar5 school-masters fashioning 
them. May we not doubt thee because we misunderstand thee. May 
we still keep firm hold of the thought that God is all-bountiful, and 
lives, not to be himself happy, but to breatne happiness upon all his 
vast creation. And grant that we may cheer and comfort ourselves 
in the fear, and ignorance, and darkness, and perplexity of our 
minds, with the thought that as winter is constantly changing 
toward summer, so the soul may go from its winter toward the ever- 
lasting summer of God. 

Strengthen us, we beseech of thee, in our personal difBculties ; in 
temptations ; in doubts ; in trials ; in our intercourse with the world ; 
in fulfilling our duties among men ; in everything that in thy wise 
providence thou hast decreed for us. Give us the inspiration of thy 
heart, and the sense of thy love. Give us trust in thee — implicit, 
overflowing trust — so that we may say, Though he slay me, yet will I 
trust him. 

And so, being led thus day by day and year by year, at last may 
we stand, every one of us, in Zion and before God. . And to the 
Father, the Son, and the Spirit, shalJ be praises evermore. Amen. 



IV. 

]SrEIGHBOELIS"ESS. 



HYMN. 

(Plymouth Collection, No. 424.) 

Thou, O my Jesus, thou didst me 

Upon the cross embrace ; 
For me didst bear the nails and spear, 

And manifold disgrace. 

And griefs and torments numberless, 

And sweat of agony. 
Yea, death itself ; and all for one 

That was Thine enemy. 

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, 
Should I not love Thee well ? 

Not for the hope of winning heaven, 
Nor of escaping hell ; 

Not with the hope of gaining aught. 

Not seeking a reward ; 
But as thyself hast loved me, 

O ever-loviug Lord. 

E'en so I love Thee, and will love. 
And in thy praise will sing ; 

Solely because Thou art my Grod, 
And my eternal King. 



IV. 

TsTEIGHBORLmESS. 



Thursday Morning, Sept. 10, 1874. 
Lesson : Luke x. 25-37. 

"Behold a certain laTvyer stood up and tempted him, saying. 
Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?" 

The Jewish system combined civil and ecclesiastical polity, 
so that what are called ^Mawyers" in the New Testament 
do not answer to what we understand as lawyers in our time, 
but resemble far more nearly doctors of divinity who inter- 
pret the ecclesiastical or religious systems of the day. Scribes 
and doctors were men who interpreted both the civil and the 
religious laws, because these laws belonged to one system 
among the Jews. 

"He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest 
thou? And he, answering, said. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, 
and with all thy mind ; and thy neighbor as thyself. And he said 
unto him, Thou hast answered right; this do and thou shalt live." 

The force of that is very much greater than we can ima- 
gine ; because, unless you put yourself in the position, we 
will say, of a devotee in a church, who has been trained to 
think that every single thing which belongs to church organi- 
zation is of tremendous importance and absolutely sacred, 
you cannot have any adequate conception of it. Take such 
a person, who has directions as to what he shall do at nine 
o'clock, at ten o'clock, at twelve o'clock, at two o'clock, at 
five o'clock, and at evening ; who has prayers to recite for 
this and for that and for the other thing ; who has enjoined 
upon him the observance of various ordinances and com- 
munions and confessions — take such a person, undiscrimi- 
nating, who has been brought Up surrounded by these external 



168 NEiaHBOBLINESS, 

instruments, and has come to feel that they are almost like 
the direct inspiration of God's will to him, and tell him, 
*^ Now all these things are simply useless, or may be ; if yon 
simply haye your thoughts seek God, that is all the wor- 
ship he seeks or wants; Sundays, feast days, fast days, 
church services of every kind may be swept away, without 
any damage ; worshiping God in your thoughts is the whole 
of worship" — and he is immeasurably shocked. But the 
Pharisees and Jews had hedged themselves about with an 
amount of service compared with which the extremest organi- 
zations of our day are very simple. Therefore, when the 
Jewish doctor, standing among filmy questions and casuis- 
tries, asked Christ, '* What shall I do to inherit eternal life ?" 
Christ asked him, ^^ What is written in the law ? How 
readest thou ? " — in other words, *^What are the command- 
ments ?" and he quotes this one : *^ Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God," ^^ and thy neighbor as thyself;" and Christ said, 
''^Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live." 
It is as if the Saviour had said, ** That is all you have to do ; 
for the other things were designed, in their proper sphere, 
to enable you to do this. If you can do this, you may lay 
aside all external helps and instruments." 

The answer, therefore, was much more weighty to the 
ears of the Pharisees and doctors than it is to our ears, at the 
first reading. 

" But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is 
my neighbor?" [instantly going on to one of the casuistical questions 
of his time.] 

Now, instead of attempting to point out, with various re- 
finements, who one's neighbor was, as an old rabbi would, 
Jesus began a fable : 

" A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho." 

Evidently he was a good orthodox Jew ; for he went to 
the right place. Jericho was peculiarly sacred. The way 
between the two places was a gorge, dark, and full of lurk ng 
places ; and it is notorious even now for being the resort of 
thieves and robbers. Well, this old Jew went down from 
Jerusalem to Jericho ; and what happened to him ? 

"A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell 



NEIOHBORLINESS. 169 

among thieves, which stripped him of his raiment, and wounded 
him, and departed, leaving him half dead." 

The same thing happens to this hour. 
" By chance there came a certain priest that way." 
Priests, between duties in the assembly, went home to 
remain until the next term came on ; and this one was going 
back to Jericho, which was his home. 

" When he saw him, he passed by on the other side." 
He made haste. He saw that there was trouble, and he 
did not want to know any more about it. He was going 
down toward home, but seeing the man at a distance, and 
fearing that he might get into some difficulty, he took pains 
to go on the other side, and passed by — as to this hour many 
persons do who do not want to make themselves acquainted 
with trouble ; and avoid going where they know it is, and 
put themselves out of the way of it, so that they may not, in 
the natural course of their lives, come upon it. 

" Likewise a Levite [a subordinate man in the temple — an under- 
worker in the assembly], when he was at the place, came and looked 
on him." 

And probably he said to himself, *' Here is a case. I 
wonder where he's hit ? He don't stir. I wonder if he is 
much hurt ? Well, this is curious." 

'* And he passed by on the other side." 

He was even harder than the priest. The priest was 
afraid to trust himseK there ; but the Levite came and looked 
him all over, and then went on the other side, and left him. 

" But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was." 

IN'ow, if there was any creature in the world that was des- 
picable ia the eyes of an orthodox Jew, it was a Samaritan. 
There is no hatred like that of two persons in the same 
church, one of whom pretends to be a great deal higher 
and better than the other, but both of whom pretend to 
be the same thing. You will hardly find a church which 
has not in it a certain class that somebody thinks it is right 
to prey on. It seems almost necessary to human existence 
that men should have vent for their combative feelings. We 
must have somebody to kick and to damn ; and the Jews had 



170 NEIGHBORLINESS. 

the Samaritans. We used to have the abolitionists ; bnt we 
are now all at sea to know what class to select as the objects 
of our indignation. The Samaritans, however, were historical- 
ly tough, and they endured to the end of the Jewish nation, so 
that the Jew never had any lack of something to hate. Our 
Lord, therefore, in selecting a Samaritan, and putting him 
in sharp contrast with the priest (the highest of the Jews), 
and the Levite (the official Jew), made the case as strong as 
it possibly could be. You cannot conceive of anything that 
would grate more harshly on a Jew's feelings than that. 
" When he saw him he had compassion on him." 

The priest had not, the Levite had not, but the detestable 
Samaritan had. 

*' And went to him, and hound up his wounds [imperiling himself 
by rendering himself liable to be assaulted and set upon by the same 
band of thieves, but caring nothing for his own danger], pouring in 
oil and wine [the oil in his wounds and the wine in his mouth, I sup- 
pose], and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and 
took care of him. And on the morrow, when he departed, he took 
out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, Take 
care of him ; and whatever thou spendest more, when I come again 
I will repay thee." 

He followed him up. He did not let him go. He made 
a thorough business of it. Having put him on his beast, he 
took him to a tavern, which was at a considerable distance, 
and gave orders to have him taken care of. The next day, 
having seen him made comfortable, and being sure that he 
was on the way to recovery, he thought of the future, and 
took out two pence (which gives us a very different idea of 
taverns from what we have now), and gave them to the host, 
and told him whatever more was required to supply the man's 
wants he would pay on his return. 

Of all men on earth the Samaritan was the man who had 
a right to be careless of what became of a Jew, who was his 
sworn enemy ; but while the best of the Jews refused the 
offices of humanity, the Samaritan, contrary to the human 
feeling and national impulse, took care of the unfortunate 
victim at his own peril and expense, and would not give him 
up till with labor and trouble he had brought him to a safe 
place, and watched over him until he was cured. 



NEIQHBORLINESS. 171 

All that is painted by the hand of a master. There is 
not a word squandered. 

" Which now, of these three [says the Master, lifting himself up, 
and looking in the eye of the finikin doctor of the law], thinkest 
thou was neighbor unto him that fell among the thieves?" 

An honest man would have said, ^^ The Samaritan" ; but 
he dodged that word. 

" And he said, He that showed mercy on him [by that periph- 
rasis going around the hated name]. Then said Jesus unto him. Go 
and do thou likewise." 

It is not enough for us to stand and watch how Christ 
hit the mark, as one would stand at a rifle-shooting and see 
how each man hit the mark. It was given for our instruc- 
tion throughout the world, throughout all time ; it is an in- 
terpretation of the law of kindness which fell from the lips 
of our Master, and it belongs to our every-day life. There 
is nothing that lives that is not the subject of this law. You 
might expand the bounds beyond the human family, and in- 
clude the whole animal creation, and there would be nothing 
susceptible of suffering to which we would not be related. 
There is no trouble of any inanimate creature that ought not 
to be your trouble, if you are in the vicinity of it ; and you 
have no right to excuse yourself from relieving it because it 
is not of your household, your class or your nationality. 
Man belongs to man, the world over. No matter what di- 
visions there may be in society, and no matter how necessary 
they may be, the moment the question of humanity comes 
up all men are members one of another, and there is no 
reason why one should draw back from another on any ground 
whatsoever. 



172 NEIGHBOBLINESS. 

PRAYEE. 

Our Heavenly Father, wilt thou shine down upon our hearts with 
that light which makes our day; for not when the sun shines alone 
is it day if there be darkness in us. If there he the night of despond- 
ency, or of unbelief, or of angry passions, lowering like clouds over 
the day, then it is not day unto us. Only in the light of thy counte- 
nance do we see light. We pray for that communication of thyself 
that shall arouse in us that which is like thee, and give it ascendency, 
so that all our sky above us may be bright, as the earthly heaven is 
bright with the light of the sun ; and in that light may we behold all 
things in their true colors and proportions. May we be exalted 
above mere animal rules, and our physical position in the world. 
May we think of ourselves as the sons of God, belonging to another 
and higher kingdom, with better laws, and impulses, and influences, 
and treasures that the world knows nothing of— holy thoughts, 
peaceful feelings, deep loves, and rejoicings of the innermost soul. 

Grant, we pray thee, that we may walk, this day, as they have a 
right to walk who are the sons of God, ordained by no outward 
touch, sent forth of God among men, known of God, beloved of him, 
and sustained by his power. Grant that we may go whither we are 
called, with contentment and with a resignation to thy will. For 
what is all time, and the round world, compared with one thought of 
thine? What are all the issues of life but shadows, but passing 
things, that quench themselves as a taper is quenched at night? 
The long day of life itself— how short is it when measured upon the 
cycles of the eternal world! 

Lift us up, we beseech of thee. As they that ascend the mountain 
are lifted above many and many clouds below, and can look down 
upon them, so may we look down upon care, and discontent, and 
anxiety, and troubles, and storms in life. Give us such life in thee 
that we may have dominion over ourselves and over our circum- 
stances. Give us patience to wait. Give us courage to contend. 
Give us endurance to bear burdens. May we be able to take the 
scorching of the sun by day, and may we also take the darkness and 
solitariness of the night, and be found adequate everywhere and 
always to the calls and demands of God's providence. May we not 
be concerned nor troubled about trifles. May we not be led to fret, 
nor to wear out our joy by petty cares. May we have rest in God; 
and not only may we have enough for our own peace, but may we 
have enough so that we can impart peacefulness to the troubled, and 
calm their disquieted moments. 

Give us this fellowship of the spirit, this noble friendship, this for- 
ward-looking, this faith of the Gospel which rests in immortality. 
May we taste beforehand some of those joys which we are to inherit. 
Bless each according to his want, and according to the wants of 
those who are dearest to him. And thus wilt thou carry us on from 
day to day until the welcome word shall come, You are needed in 
your Father's house; and with joy unspeakable may we rise, and go 
forth, and fly to that land where is no more winter, no more sorrow, 
no more endurance, but high and sacred joy, for evermore. Amen. 



Heavek 



HYMN. 

(Plymouth CoUiECTioN, No. 545.) 

Awake, my soul, in joyful lays. 
And sing thy great Redeemer's praise; 
He justly claims a song for me. 
His loving-kiudness, O how free! 

When trouble, like a gloomy cloud, 
Has gathered thick and thundered loud. 
He near my soul has always stood, 
His loving-kiudness, O how good! 

Often I feel my sinful heart 
Prone from my Jesus to depart; 
But though I have him oft forgot, 
His loving-kindness changes not. 

Soon shall I pass the gloomy vale, 
Soon all my mortal powers must fail; 
O may my last expiring breath, 
His loving-kindness sing in death. 

Then let me mount and soar away 
To the bright world of endless day ; 
And sing with rapture and surprise, 
His loving kindness in the skies. 



V. 

Heaye^^. 



Friday Morning, Sept. 11, 1874. 
Lesson: Heb. xii. 18-29. 

"For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, 
and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and 
tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words." 

This is a description of the future, and of the great aerial 
and spiritual band. Their life was all moving. It is the 
heavenly land that is spoken of. And you will take notice 
that in writing to the Hebrews the writer gathered together 
all those themes which lay within the knowledge of the He- 
brew patriot. His love of country, his love of industry, all 
the historical elements that he was proud of, and the various 
topographical elements that are so strong in the imagination 
and memory of men — these were employed by him. But we 
have only a secondary and artificial relation to them. 

There are two ways in which we can construe such a de- 
scription as this. One is the literal way, attempting to make 
beUeve that we are Jews, or that we feel now what they used 
to feel. The other is an emulation of the spirit of it, exer- 
cising the liberty which we have of doing by our race-stock, 
and. by our habits of life, what the apostle does here by the 
Jewish habits of life and race-stock. We have a right to 
construct a heaven out of the things which have been given 
to us on earth, provided it can be done on the higher spirit- 
ual plane. Everybody has in his own life some things which 
are so dear that if he could put them forward and imagine a 
land in which these were familiar things it would give reality 
and sweetness to it. And I think we have exactly that 



176 HEAVEN. 

right. I think this' is addressed to our imagination as it 
was to the Jewish imagination. 

" Te are not come to the mount [evidently Mount Sinai, in the 
wilderness] that mi^ht be touched, aud that burned with fire, nor 
unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trum- 
pet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated 
that the word should not be spoken to them any more;" " but ye are 
come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the 
heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to 
the general assembly and church of the first-born which are written 
in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men 
made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to 
the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of 
Abel. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped 
not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we 
escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven ; whose 
voice then shook the earth ; but now he hath promised, saying. Yet 
once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this 
word. Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are 
shaken, as of things that are made, that those things which cannot be 
shaken may remain." 

The passage signifies that when the shaking comes, all 
things transient, all things secular, will pass away, while the 
eternal verities, the great spiritual facts, will remain, and will 
never change. 

" Wherefore we, receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved 
[the great kingdom of the soul, in which reside the moral sentiments 
and the affections], let us [having a knowledge of this kingdom, and 
believing that we are moving toward the highest development of it] 
have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably, with reverence 
and godly fear." 



I 



HEAVEN. i>^>^ 



PEAYER. 



Our Father, we pray for thy blessing. Put thine hand upon our 
head, and call us thy children. "Warm our hearts with thy love. 
Grant, we pray thee, that this day we may walk with serenity 
of thought, with patience, and with that hope by which we are to 
be saved. May we be able to leave behind things that belong 
to the past ; may we not be discontented with the things that are of 
the present ; and may we look forward with a perpetual clearness of 
vision upon the things which lie before us in the future. Grant 
that we may have such an overruling sense of the divine power and 
majesty, of the nature of God, that we shall know no fear, and stand 
immutable. 

Bless, we pray thee, all who go forth, and all who abide at home. 
Sanctify our intercourse. Grant that we may learn so to carry our- 
selves with ourselves that we shall be able at last to join with the 
great throng where there is no clashing ; where no discords can come ; 
where joys are harmonious and constant. We pray that thou wilt 
make us more fruitful in bringing before ourselves the city— our city. 
Grant that we may have more power to reproduce before us our 
God. May there be to each one a God dear to him, personal, real, 
all-powerful. Wilt thou stay our thoughts on thee, and satisfy our 
hearts in thee. May our faith in thee not take us away from each 
other, but strengthen our confidence in one another, and give us 
more gladness each in the others. So may our life be in God that it 
may be in each other, and with all our fellow-men. 

We pray for those who are absent from us — our children; our 
children's children; our brothers and sisters; our companions in 
labor and toil ; our partners in any relations of life. We pray that 
grace may abound toward every one. 

Accept our morning offering; and carry us through every day of 
our lives, until at last the gates shall be thrown open, and amid 
shouts we shall enter, to be forever with the Lord. 

We ask it in the name of the Beloved. Amen, 



\ 



VI. 
PlOTUEES OF TEUTH. 



hym:n^. 1 

(Plymouth CoLiiECTioN, No. 346.) 

Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 

Let me hide myself in Thee ! 

Let the water and the blood, 

From Thy riven side which flowed, 

Be of sin the double cure ; 

Cleanse me from its guilt and powero 

Not the labors of my hands 
Can fulfill thy law's demands : 
Could my zeal no respite know, 
Could my tears for ever flow, 
All for sin could not atone ; 
Thou must save, and Thou alone! 

Nothing in my hand I bring. 
Simply to Thy cross I cling ; 
Naked, come to Thee for dress; 
Helpless, look to Thee for grace ; 
Foul, I to Thy fountain fly ; 
Wash me. Saviour, or I die ! 

While I draw this fleeting breath, 
When my eyelids close in death. 
When I soar to worlds unknown, 
See Thee on thy judgment throne, 
Rock of Ages, cleft for me, 
Let me hide myself in Thee. 



VI. 

Pictures of Truth. 



Sattjedat Morning, Sept. 12, 1874. 
LES30N : Rev. v. 

"I saw iu the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book 
written within and on the hack side, sealed with seven seals." 

It was a roll, — a book, not in our sense of the term, but 
in the ancient, — and could be written, like a sbeet of paper, 
on both sides. 

" And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is 
worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof?" 

It is not possible for us, with our western habits, to fall 
into the state of mind which first produced the oriental 
mode of symbolism, and then was educated by it — using a 
tower to signify a city ; ' using an urn to signify a river ; 
using various beasts of the field to signify certain moral qual- 
ities or important personages. We do it as a matter of orna- 
mentation, or for a rhetorical purpose ; but with them it was 
a fundamental principle, a part of the scheme of their edu- 
cation. It was radical with them. It was to them what the 
letters of the alphabet, which are symbols of sounds and 
words, are to us. It seems very strange to talk about a lion 
signifying personage, but when they figuratively used the 
term *Mion" what they thought of was a man, with all a 
lion's royal qualities of power, courage, superiority. When 
we use it we think of the thing itself in its literal sense, 
and then by special effort of the imagination we transfer the 
qualities ; whereas when they used it they thought only of 
the thing which was represented by it. " Crowus," ''kings," 
''locusts," " lambs," " vials," "harps," "odors," "smoke" 



182 PICTUBES OF TRUTH, 

— these things when spoken of in Eevelation are truths to 
the imagination, and are meant to suggest, as they did to 
the ancients, not the material objects of which they are the 
names, but spiritual things. 

" One of the elders saith unto me, "Weep not; behold the Lion of 
the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the 
book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. And I beheld, and lo, in 
the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of 
the elders, stood a Lamb as it had been slain (that everlasting symbol 
in the Jewish service, the slaying of the lamb), having seven horns, 
and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all 
the earth." 

In olden times the number seven had connected with it 
some mystic idea. If you come to draw, as some old painters 
did, a lamb with seven horns, and with seven eyes stuck all 
over its head, it is ludicrous ; but such were the designations 
which came down through the Jewish history to represent the 
ideal man ; and if you regard them as representing divine 
elements ; if you read with your mind glancing from the 
symbol to the seven horns and seven eyes as representing 
power, and insight, and knowledge, and other elements which 
constitute the seven Spirits of God sent forth into the earth ; 
if you take them in that generalizing way, you fall more 
nearly into the line of the understanding of those for whom 
the Eevelation was written. The Lamb signified that un- 
known center toward which all conceivable symbolizations had 
been pointed. 

"And he came and took the book out of the right hand of him 
that sat upon the throne." 

Of course that is to be taken not literally, but representa- 
tively. 

" And they sung a new song, saying. Thou art worthy to take the 
book, and to open the seals thereof ; for thou wast slain, and hast re- 
deemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and 
people, and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and 
priests ; and we shall reign on the earth. And I beheld, and I heard 
the voice of many angels round about the throne, and the beasts, and 
the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten 
thousand, and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, 
Worthy is the Lamb that was slaiB, to receive power, and riches, and 
wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing." 

The disclosure of the divine beauty and wisdom and ex- 



PICTURES OF TRUTH. 183 

cellence in the other life is such as strikes a thrill through the 
universe of God. 

" And every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and 
under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, 
heard I saying, Blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, be unto 
him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever and 
ever." 

I suppose there was never a dramatic representation that 
gave such a sense of the ecstacj jDroduced by the presence of 
God and the universality of it as this, or that equaled it. 

Remark: Those "four beasts" spoken of— [Mb. Beecher: I 
never call them heasts—1 always call them creatures^, I have heard 
called living symbols— symbols of intense vitality — in animals, and 
birds, and all kinds of life. 

Mr. Beecher : These figures are used very much as paint 
is. If you take a large oil painting by a master — represent- 
ing magnificent warriors and heroes, for instance — you single 
out some steed, perhaps, that appears to have fire in his eye ; 
and you say, " What a wonderful expression there is in that 
eye ! " And you go and look at it ; but when you come near 
it, you see that there is nothing but a daub, a little dash of 
the brush, where the fire seemed to be ; and the more you 
magnify it with a microscope, the more absurd it becomes. 
In itself it is nothing but a little whisk of the brush ; but 
when it is seen at a distance, and the imagination is brought 
to bear upon it, it looks like the eye of a mighty steed raised 
up with great enthusiasm. 

Remark : There was a colored girl in Hartford who, when talking 
about the Bible, said she did not like some parts of it because she could 
not understand them, but that she liked the Revelations because she 
could understand them. There is no book in the Bible that was 
understood to such purpose by the slaves of the South through all 
their troubles as the book of Revelation, because they perceived that 
these living images meant something good to them. They did not ask 
to understand them as we try to; they were merely lifted up and 
comforted by them. To them, in their simplicity and childlikeness, 
they were as a poem or as music. You meet the splendid imagery of 
the Revelations among the colored people of the South constant y. 
I recollect old Cudjo who had fenced in a piece of ground in our 
neighborhood [in Florida], and worked upon it, supposing it was his. 
He had split "tree tousand rail heself ;" and a man came in, and, by 
some fraud of title, took the land, his "tree tousand rail," and every- 
thing, and ordered him off. He had one bale of cotton that he had 
raised, and that was all he got for the land. In telling of it, he said, 



184 PICTURES OF TRUTH. 

"Dat man come and say, 'You go off dis land.' Den I say, 'Dis my 
land : I bought it.' He say, ' Go off from it.' Den I say, ' Dese tree 
tousand rail I split ebery one mysel.' 'Can't help it,' he say; 'you 
go off.' ' I get it back agin,' I say. 'No, you won't,' he say. 'Yes, I 
will, by-and-by,' I say. He say, 'I don't know you.' I say, 'You 
don't know me, but de Lord, he know me; and one ob dese days de 
angel Gabrel come, wi' one foot on de sea, and one on de land, and he 
blow once for ole Uncle Cudjo.' " He understood Revelations, and 
the thought that the angel would blow once for him quite comCorted 
him. About two weeks afterward, by the intervention of some of 
the neighbors, who knew that Cudjo was an honest man, it was ascer- 
tained that his oppressor had not made out the fulfilment of the law, 
and they made it out at Washington in behalf of Cudjo, and his land 
was restored to him ; so he said that the angel blew quicker than he 
expected I 

Mk. Beechee : You will find precisely that, where men 
of high moral enthusiasm are brought up under a despotism. 
You will find in every age, and all over the world, as in the 
case of the Waldenses and Huguenots, and Puritans and 
Scotch Covenanters, that when men are cut off from society- 
institutions and earthly helj)s they are apt to go back to the 
prophets in the Old Testament, or to Eevelation in the New, 
or to both of them. Persons who are cut off from all ordi- 
nary and reasonable expectation betake themselves to the 
shadowy land of mysticism, and carry themselves through 
the most tremendous crises of human experience on the ap- 
peal of God to their imagination, or to their moral sense 
through their imagination, and not on the appeal of God to 
their conscience through their reason. 

Now, New England has one fundamental heresy. The 
typical New England man thinks that everything in God's 
universe can be reduced to an idea, and expressed in an in- 
tellectual form. New Englanders, therefore, are always 
attempting to take the marrow out of things. As we take the 
crab, and suck the marrow out of each particular joint, so 
they take every figure, illustration and symbol in the proph- 
ecies or in Eevelation, and want to crush it, and squeeze out 
the marrow that is in it, and bring it into the form of an in- 
tellectual statement ; but that is absolutely impossible. It is 
absurd. 

Remark: When we were going down the Ochlochony river, the 
boatmen sung the book of Revelation pretty much through, one 
night, to the chorus, " I John saw." One man rehearsed the text, 



PICTURES OF TRUTH. 185 

and they all came in like thunder with, "I John saw." They told 
about getting the dragon down from heaven, and shutting him in 
hell, and locking the door, and carrying the key to Jesus, and so on. 
There is another song taken from Revelation, where a warrior is de- 
scribed as being sent forth from heaven and riding on a white horse. 
It is one of the most solemn songs that I have ever heard. There is 
something in it about a dress parade, and about calling for "valiant 
sol-di-ers." 

Question : I have in my mind one notable exception to what you 
said about Revelation being an inspiration to good men. How can 
you explain Luther's idea of Revelation ? Why was it that he never 
seemed to appreciate it, although he was under such stringent press- 
ure? 

Mk. Beechee : Well, he did not — that is all. Tt always 
seemed to me a remarkable fact. 

Question : It seems to me that the New England error is not, as 
you say, in the general belief that everything can be reduced to an 
intellectual idea, but in the false supposition that it is in the power of 
any man or any combination of men to reduce everything in the 
present life to an intellectual idea. 

Me. Beechee : Well, can you reduce music to an in- 
tellectual idea ? 

Remark : I think the Lord can. 

Me. Beechee : I do not see how you can think the Lord 
can unless you take the boyish view that the Lord can do 
everything. When we children used to discuss the subject, 
Charles insisted that the Lord could not do everything — for 
instance that he could not make a sheet of paper with only 
one side to it ! 

Question: That is an illustration from an entirely different class 
of things. We are taught that in the other life we shall have no phy- 
sical body, that there will be only a soul ; but do you not suppose, 
though there may be no sound of music, that the idea of music will 
remain ? , 

Me. Beechee : The proposition lies in its being reduced 
to an intellectual form of statement. It does not follow that 
our mtellect will be the same m the other life that it is here. 
We know that much that we learn is higher than that which 
we learn by the perception of material and physical qualities, 
and through the reasoning intellect. We know perfectly 
well that what we call the intuition, or the imagination, takes 
in things which it is impossible for the intellect to compre- 
hend. The intellect, as we have it here, is adapted simply 



186 PICTUBES OF TRUTH. 

to the conditions of this lower state ; bnt when we rise into 
the other hfe we shall haye a different intellect. There, in- 
stead of redncing music, or higher truths of any kind, to the 
form of statement by our earthly intellect, we shall have an 
intellect which will reject such mechanical or formal proposi- 
tions, and intuitively apprehend all manner of glorious qual- 
ities and truths. Then we shall think by feeling, and not 
feel by thinking. 

I am distinctly conscious, in preaching, when my health 
is perfectly good, and my subject is congenial to me and 
adapted to my nature, of rising into states in which I have 
an outlook and insight into a realm before which words are 
as powerless as hands are to grasp Ihe landscape on the other 
side of the mountain. The truth, under such circumstances, 
is more clear to my inward vision than is anything that I see 
or hear or feel to my outward senses. I apprehend things 
that are absolutely non-expressible by any human words. I 
experience what may be likened to the opening of a window 
into heaven ; and it gives me a feeble conception of what the 
future may be. 

Question : Is not that implied in the Thirteenth of Corinthians f 

Mr. Beecher : Yes. Paul there tells us that the sum of 
all our knowledge in this life is so fragmentary that in com- 
parison with the knowledge of the other life it is what the 
imperfect notions of childhood are in comparison with the 
ideas of manhood. When we die, and go into the other life, 
we shall look back upon the sum total of our knowledge on 
earth as in old age we look back upon our childish plays. 
There is something of truth in everything that we remember 
about childhood ; but as measured by the more perfect 
knowledge of manhood it is fragmentary. 

Question : Does he not say that it is in the direction of feeling 
rather than of intellect? 

Mr. Beecher : His words are : 

"We know in part, and we prophesy in part; but when that 
which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall he done away." 

There will be something left, after that which is shifting 
and evanescent, after the froth, is off ; and it will be some- 



PICTURES OF TRUTH. 187 

thing substantial. What is it ? Faith, hope, love, the 
greatest of them being love. That is going to stand the 
wreck of time, and dissolution, and change, and evolution, 
and will be found potential. 

Remark : It cannot die out ; but it may take new forms of ap- 
prehension. 

Mr. Beecher : Yes. 

Remark: I did not mean to say that in the future life we would 
reason out processes by which music would have the same peculiari- 
ties it does here, but that we should have a clearer conception of it. 

Mr. Beecher : It seems to me more like instantaneity 
of comprehensive thought. At midnight undertake to ex- 
amine a landscape with a candle, carrying it round to each 
particular thing, and try thus to get an idea of the whole 
scene. That is the way we are exploring in this life. But let 
a thunder-storm comes up, and a flash, of lightning opens the 
whole country — hill, valley, cliff, every part — to instantane- 
ous view ; and we see it instantly. That is the way we will 
think in the other life. 



188 PICTURES OF TRUTH. 



PEAYEE. 

We thank thee that thou hast caused the sun to shine on the earth, 
and reveal the beauties thereof, and that all things come forth strong 
and hopeful. We rejoice that it lights all things alike — the most 
humble and the most exalted; the poorest and the richest; the most 
miserable and the happiest. Unconscious of its bounty, it follows 
them and nourishes them ; and many there be that in all their lives 
give no thought back to the source of their health, strength, and joy. 
So art thou shining in the greatness of thy love, and power, and wis- 
dom, moulding the things of time, and looking upon the earth as 
a cradle where thou art rocking thy little infant ones, beholding men 
in their career of weakness, and want, and temptation, and in their 
feeble attempt at repentance and recovery. Thou art a God more 
merciful than the most merciful, more tender than the most tender, 
and more loving than the most loving, among men. Thou that hast 
before thee all truth and purity, dost abhor untruth and impurity. 
The discord of wickedness thou dost abhor ; and yet thou art one that 
is able to prescribe a remedy for all that is evil. Thou art a God of 
infinite patience and long-suffering, and art bringing back to power, 
and beauty, and strength, and goodness, those that are afar off, and 
that are weak, and faint, and unlovely, and imperfect. 

Deliver us in thine own way out of the peculiar troubles, and temp- 
tations, and trials that belong severally to us ; or, if it be not in thy 
sight best that we should be delivered, then grant that we may have 
that which is better than deliverance — the power to endure, and to 
live on the bright and joyous side of our life, though there be sorrow 
beneath. 

We pray that thus, while there may be underneath the everlasting 
sadness and sorrow of souls yet enchained and suffering by reason of 
evil, there may break out above, joyously, hymns of praise and far- 
reaching hopes, and more blessed visions of the imagination, and 
yearnings and longings that draw us upward; and as the sun shining 
upon the trees is felt by the roots that are buried deep in the earth, 
and that never see the light which brings forth from them that 
which is the nourishment of the whole tree, and that produces the 
bud, and the leaf, and the blossom that cover it; so grant that the 
shining of thy face upon us may reach down to the deepest parts of 
our nature, and that every element of our life may be so penetrated 
with thine influence that we may bear fruit to thine honor and glory. 

Grant, we pray thee, that this day we may walk as the children of 
God. Why should we go shuffling and crouching through life, who 
are the children of the King? We belong to the aristocracy of 
the universe. All things are ours because we are Christ's. The vic- 
tory is already won for us. We are waiting ; we are traveling ; we are 
going home to the glory that is reserved for us. May we not, there- 
fore, be so blinded and bowed down earthward as not to see what our 
wealth is, or what our honors, and dignities, and joys are. Grant 
that we may, living in these inspiring thoughts, sustain ourselves as 



PICTURES OF TRUTH. 189 

they that are swinging on the sea, sick in heart and body, sustain 
themselves by thoughts of the home which they are approaching. 
Looking forward to the land beyond, where thou dweliest, may we 
patiently wait for it, until thou callest us thither to live in thy 
presence. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit, ever- 
more. Amen. 



VII. 

SOEIPTXJEE LESSOI^; 



Without Comment. 



HYMN. 

(Pltmouth Collection, No. 704.) 



Let saints below in concert sing 

With those to glory gone : 
For ail the servants of our King 

In earth and heaven are one. 

One f amilji, we dwell in Him, 
One church above, beneath, 

Though now divided by the stream. 
The narrow stream of death : 

One Army of the living God, 

To his command we bow ; 
Part of the host have crossed the flood, 

And part are crossing now. 

Some to their everlasting home 

This solemn moment fly ; 
And we are to the margin come. 

And soon expect to die. 

Oh, that we now might see our Gruide ! 

Oh, that the word were given ! 
Come, blessed Lord ! the waves divide 

And land us all in heaven. 



Til. 



Monday Morning, Sept. 14, 1874. 
Lesson : Phil. ii. 1-16. Without comment. 



PEAYER. 



We rejoice, our Father, that we have no need to supplicate thee 
to draw thine attention, to warm thine heart, or to remind thee of 
aught. Thou art beforehand by all the power of thy life ; and we 
live because we are found of thee; and we love because we are 
melted by thy heart. We draw near to thee because thou hast drawn 
near to us. 

We pray that thou wilt grant unto us a realization of all that 
thou art, or of all that thou art which is comprehensible by us. 
Grant that we may live in that part of ourselves where we shall 
understand the things of heaven. Grant that we may have that 
element that is of thyself in us quickened and made strong, so that 
it may interpret to us something of the height and depth and length 
and breadth of that love which passeth all understanding. 

We beseech of thee, therefore, that thou wilt mould our natures ; 
that thou wilt teach us day by day ; and that we may learn to feel 
that by all the things that bear upon the body, and upon the heart, 
and upon the understanding, thou, the great Worker, art fashioning 
U5 and drawing us away from our inferior selves, and from that 
which is of the earth and purely earthly, and beginning in us that 
diviner life which shall yet grow stronger and stronger in the land 
that is now open to us— a land of vision, but a land which shall be- 
come our eternal home, and a land in which, when we reach it, we 
shall be safe. 

Have compassion, we pray thee, upon every one in thy presence, 
and speak to each one by name, so that he may know that Christ 
thinks of him, that Christ loves him, and that the Spirit is manifest- 
ing itself and influencing him. May we understand thy purpose, and 
thy mode of dealing with us, so that we may not seem to be strug- 
gling with a host of adversaries in vain, but may behold ourselves 
surrounded by a cloud of witnesses and helpers. May our eyes be 
touched, and enabled to see the whole heaven filled with the 
chariots of God. May we know every day, even in sorrow, when 



194 PRAYER. 

Ibowed down, -when the storm sweeps over us, and we are not able 
to stand up, that God is in the storm, and that, by-and-by, he will 
restore the light of his countenance to us. May we accept care and 
trouble and disappointment as necessary. Though for a time chas- 
tisement is not joyous but grievous, may we feel assured that after- 
ward it will work in us the peaceable fruits of righteousness. May 
we be willing to be chastised, and may the assurance, that whom 
thou lovest thou chastenest, reconcile us to our lot. May our will 
from day to day be thy will. May our life seem to us as ordained 
of God. May it be our joy that he that hath kept us hitherto will 
keep us to the end, and that we shall finally be saved. 

Bless, we pray thee, all this household. We thank thee for the 
pleasant hours that we have had together, and for the friendships 
which have begun between us ; and we pray that those who are go- 
ing forth from us from day to day, and this day, may go with a con- 
sciousness of thy providence above them and around them. May 
they go forth as the children of God; and may they be abundantly 
blessed in returning to their dear friends, to find them safe, and to 
be made conscious of the goodness of God in the protection of those 
that have been absent from them. 

We pray that, as we are pilgrims on earth, and are seeking now a 
better place and home, we may feel that our life here is but a pil- 
grimage, and that our home is beyond the sea upon that shore upon 
which dash no waves, on which fall no storms, in whose sky is no 
cloud, and where is perfect blessedness evermore. There may we 
never be dissevered. There may we meet to rejoice in each other 
with an overflowing joy, and above all to rejoice in him who loved 
and gave himself for us, and has redeemed us unto himself. 

And to the Father, the Son, and the Spirit shall be praises ever- 
more. Amen. 



VIII. 
CHEISTIAi^ LIYIjS"G. 



HYMN. 

(" Shining Shore.") 

My days are gliding swiftly by, 

And I, a pilgrim stranger, 
"Would not detain them as they fly. 
Those hours of toil and danger ! 

For oh, we stand on Jordan's strand, 

Our friends are passing over. 
And, just before, the shining shore 
We may almost discover. 

We'll gird our loins, my brethren dear, 

Our distant home discerning; 
Our absent Lord has left us word, 

Let every lamp be burning — 
For oh, we, etc. 

Should coming days be cold and dark, 
We need not cease our singing ; 

That perfect rest none can molest 
Where golden harps are ringing. 
For oh, we, etc. 

Let sorrow's rudest tempest blow, 

Each cord on earth to sever. 
Our King says. Come, and there's our home, 

Forever, oh, forever ! 
For oh, we, etc. 



VIII. 

Christian Living. 



Tuesday Morning, Sept. 15, 1874. 
Lesson : Rom. xii. 

" I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that 
ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto &od, 
which is your reasonable service." 

A sacrifice, in the Jews' estimation was tlie highest act of 
devotion. Sacrifice was a familiar term with them, being a 
part of their accustomed and daily life. 

"And be not conformed to this world ; but be ye transformed by 
the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, 
and acceptable, and perfect will of God." 

In Philippians he says : 

" Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things 
are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, 
whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report ; 
if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these 
things." 

When we are not conformed to this world, but are trans- 
formed by the renewing of our minds, we are not to be con- 
formed to selfishness, and pride, and frivolity, and all manner 
of wallowing passions ; we are to be conformed only to the 
things which the world has found out to be good. It is not 
only right to be conformed to these, but the .explicit com- 
mand is : 

" Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may 
prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God. 
For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is 
among 70U, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to 
think ; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every 
man the measure of faith." 

The standard on which we are to measure ourselves, then. 



198 CHBISTIAN LIVING. 

is not our physical strength, or beauty ; it is not onr apti- 
tude for business ; the true measure of manhood is the 
possession of higher moral qualities. According as God hath 
dealt to every man the measure of faith, let him think of 
himself ; — and by that rule we mostly should think very little 
of ourselves ! 

" For as we have many members in one body in Christ, and all 
members have not the same office : so we, being many, are one body 
in Christ, and every one members one of another. Having then 
gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, whether 
prophecy, let us prophesy according to the proportion of faith." 

Here prophecy does not mean foretelling, but instructing. 
The prophets were teachers, mainly, and they revealed the 
future only incidentally and occasionally. Their main office 
was instruction ; and propheci/ in the New Testament very 
largely means teaching of the higher grade — the teaching 
which comes from inspiration. 

" Or ministry, let us wait on our ministering ; or he that teacheth 
[catechetically], on teaching; or he that exhorteth, on exhortation." 

That is, let every man be contented to develop his life 
along the line of those qualities and faculties in which he 
excels. 

Do not be coveting each other's gifts. Do not refuse to 
do a humble thing because you cannot do a higher thing. 
Take that capacity which is in you, high, middle or low, and 
use it ; and as the Apostle proceeds to show, it is more than 
necessary that you should do right with it. The quality of 
being right is important, and the quality of the right thing 
done is important. 

" He that giveth, let him give with simplicity." 

It is not enough to give. Griving must be done un- 
affectedly, naturally, easily, pleasantly ; not in a puffed- 
up, arrogant and patronizing manner ; not with a pompous 
complacency. Let him that gives do it Just as quietly and 
naturally as he would talk. Anybody that has ever had to 
collect money for charitable purposes knows the difference 
between kind giving and giving with selfishness. Some 
people give ; but they are always like a pump that is run 
down, and you have to work for an hour before you can 



CHRISTIAN LIVING. -\ 99 

catcli the water ; and tlien you get but little out of tliem. 
Some give ; but they give only after a long argument to 
show how poor they are. Others give, and do it in a very 
showy way, so as to make the recipient feel as if he had 
received a great favor. But now and then you find a j)er- 
son who in giving to you makes you really happy. He 
gives promptly and sweetly ; and you almost feel as though 
you had done Mm a favor. That is Christian giving. 

" He that worketh, with diligence." 

A slack administration is contrary to Christian morality. 

" He that showeth mercy, with cheerfulness." 

Some persons run at you like a dog with his mouth open ; 
and they think that they have shown you mercy because at 
last they turn away and do not bite you. But mercy is to be 
beautiful and gracious. It is to be bestowed not surlily but 
with cheerfulness. 

" Let love he without dissimulation." 

Do not pretend to love people, for the sake of getting 
something from them, or for the sake of allapng their sus- 
picion or jealousy, or anything of that kind : let love be 
honest. 

" Abhor that which is evil ; cleave to that which is good." 

These chapters in the New Testament contain an ideal of 
life. They are so full of practical wisdom that I marvel that 
in all the new-fangled notions and theories and systems 
which set aside religion as of no account, men do not see the 
errors. 

Contrast this twelfth chapter of Romans with any part 
of Solomon's Proverbs, and see the advance that has been 
made in the art of noble and manly living. Solomon's Prov- 
erbs are very wise indeed for the economic and practical 
conduct of men in exterior life ; and they are very impor- 
tant : but they are not very deep. In this twelfth chapter of 
Romans the standpoint is the very interior life of a renewed 
manhood ; and no man can follow such a chapter as this and 
not become simply heroic. It is a chapter of heroism. 

"Be kindly affectioned one to another, with brotherly love ; in 
honor preferring one another." 



200 CHRISTIAN LIVING. 

Well we do honor one another in a very small way of po- 
liteness. A well-bred person rises and gives np his seat to a 
superior. He would like it himself; but still the impulse 
of polite consideration requires that he should yield it. The 
young, if they are polite, will give up their seat to older 
persons. A gentleman will give up his seat to a lady. In 
a few minor things we obey this command as a particular act 
of politeness ; but we refuse or neglect to do it in higher 
relations and more important elements of life. 

" Not slothful in business." 

Industry is a Christian virtue. 

' Fervent in spirit." 

Fervency is entirely reconcilable with the most industri- 
ous and enterprising business life ; but it is more than enter- 
j)rise and industry. Much is required of a man of which he 
is not capable when his feelings are cold. You cannot weld 
together two pieces of iron unless they are hot ; but when 
they are at a white heat you may weld them firmly. Many 
elemeuts that will not dissolve in cold water will in hot 
water. There are many things that you can do at a heat that 
you cannot do in coldness. There are many things that you 
cannot understand in a sluggish cold state which you can un- 
derstand in a state of warmth and excitement. There are 
many things that a man cannot believe or do except when his 
soul is roused up and his imagination is flashing, and he is 
fervent in every part of his being. In the most fervent life 
things become easy, and they also become comprehensible. 

*' Serving the Lord." 

Serve the Lord in all that you do. 

*' Rejoicing [when you have nothing else to rejoice in] in hope." 

Live in the future when the present is intolerable. The 
future is that which lies along the path-walk of Christ, where 
the promises are. 

" Patient in tribulation." 

It shuts off all complaints, and repining and moroseness 
and combativeness. 

" Continuing instant in prayer." 



CHRISTIAN LIVING. 201 

Tliis means, not going down on your knees all the time, 
not praying by the yard or by the clock, but being in the 
spirit of communion with God, and pouring your thoughts, 
as if you had a comj^auion close by you, into his bosom con- 
tinually. 

" Distrilbuting to the necessities of the saints ; given to hospitali- 
ty. Bless them which persecute you : bless, and curse not. Rejoice 
■with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep." 

It is not demanded that we shall not sing, or that we shall 
not go and sit down and be merry with young folks. Paul 
was not of that mind. It is right, beautiful and manly to 
yield yourself to all right impulses in the society of those 
that are with you, amusing and being amused. It is proper 
to enjoy leisure with those that have leisure, to work with 
those that work, and to do business with those that do busi- 
ness ; but we are also to sympathize with the sorrows of those 
who are in trouble, and to weep with them that weep. 

"Be of the same mind one toward another. Mind not high 
things." 

Do not ask, '^What is the style? What is the fashion? 
and. What does society think ?'^ Have a just and equitable 
mind which shall nerceive the nature and true value of tilings 
everywhere. 

" Condescend to men of low estate." 

Do not, however, let them know that you are condescend- 
ing, or you will spoil it all. 

" Be not wise in your own conceits. 

It is said, in another place, '^ Seest thou a man wise in his 
own conceit? there is more hope of a fool than of him." 
In still another place it is said, 

" Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat 
with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." 

And I think you might bray and pound and pestle a man 
that is seK-conceited, and he would come out about as con- 
ceited as ever. Conceit is apt to grow stronger and stronger 
as men grow older. Men's tempers are softened and made 
sweeter by sorrows ; but a man who is constitutionally and 
educationally self-conceited gets worse and worse as he ad- 



202 CHRISTIAN LIVING. 

vances in years, and becomes in old age careless in his self- 
conceit. 

" Recompense no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the 
sight of all men." 

It is necessary not only to be honest, but to be known to 
be honest. 

" If it Ibe possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all 
men." 

" Seek peace and pursue it/' as it is said elsewhere. It 
is not possible to be peaceable always. *^ Whatsoever thy 
hand findeth to do, do it with thy might," I suppose would 
be applicable here. 

" If it he possible^, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all 
men. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place 
unto wrath ; for it is written, Vengeance is mine [God never lent it 
out] ; I will repay, saith the Lord. Therefore if thine enemy hunger 
[do not stop and commence a quibbling argument about justice] feed 
him ; if he thirst, give him drink [and do not do it in order to heap 
coals of fire on his head] ; for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire 
on his head." 

Nothing will make him so ashamed of himself as to see 

how much better you behaye than he did. 

" Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." 



CHUISTIAN LIVING 203 



PRAYEE. 

O God, we are ashamed when we think how long we have known 
thy law, and how it has been brought home to ns in every specifica- 
tion, and with all familiarity, to see how little we have done. We 
have sought for knowledge that is afar off; we have been anxious to 
know the circuits of thy thought; we have reasoned upon infinite 
themes ; and we have puffed ourselves up with thinking that we had 
knowledge ; but that which pertains to the life of Christ in our souls, 
self-government, the development of love in all its forms, and the 
reduction in daily life of all our powers to thy will— how little have 
we learned of these things ! We are not responsible before thee for 
that which we receive at thy hand, but only for the use which we 
make of it; yet how poorly have we used thine instruments that 
have been placed in us. 

We thank thee for the blessedness of the past, and pray for the 
inspiration of the future. We pray that we may have discernment 
to know what are the things that are most important, and that we 
may treat thy word as the word of God, and not stop upon the letter, 
nor upon its external history. May we take from thy word its mar- 
row — that which shall go to the interior and very spirit of our life. 

Grant unto us this day that we may walk in the fear of the Lord, 
not servilely, but filially, in love, in trust, in faith, in hope. Grant 
that we may have joy in thee; and may it be a joy that shall reflect 
its light again upon all things outward, so that from the light of God 
in-dwelling we may have light upon our path. Grant that we may 
not carry our own burden. Since we have everlasting strength, may 
we lean upon it. May we not seek to defy the storm and the tempest : 
may we rather run in to the tower, to the refuge, and be hidden 
from the storm till it be overpast. 

We pray that we may not be in despondency or despair. May we 
rejoice in hope. May our patience never fail. May we never feel 
that we have borne long enough. If thou dost forgive until seventy 
times seven, grant that we may bear and endure every check or 
hindrance or infelicity or punishment or suffering so long as it is the 
will of God; and may we so far conquer the inaptitude of our nature 
as at last to be able to rejoice in tribulations, in infirmities, in what- 
ever shall make us manly and ennoble us with those qualities which 
are like thine. 

We pray that thou wilt bless our households, our children, our 
brothers and sisters, all .our dear friends and companions. May the 
blessing of Almighty God, which makes us so rich and happy here, 
abound in ail the places whence we have come, and whither our 
thoughts return hourly. 

Prosper thy cause. Unite thy people. Grant that churches may 
not be dashed as armies one over against another. May there be 
a unity among all thy people, not external, but in love and patience, 
in faith, in hope, and in sympathy. And grant that the promises 
which respect the glory of God revealed upon earth may bo hastened. 



204 CHRISTIAN LIVING. 

May the time come when light shall shine, when the sun shall 
no more go down, and when the everlasting daylight of God shall 
abide upon the earth. 

And to thy name shall be the praise, Father, Son, and Spirit. 
Amen. 



IX. 
Ol^E WITH OHEIST. 



H Y M ]sr . 

(Plymouth Collection, No. 837.) 

Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy Tbosom fly 
While the billows near m^e roll, 

While the tempest still is high : 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide. 

Till the storm of life is past. 
Safe into the haven guide ; 

O receive my soul at last. 

Other refuge have I none — 

Hangs my helpless soul on Thee; 
Leave, Oh ! leave me not alone, 

Still support and comfort me; 
All my trust on Thee is stayed, 

All my help from thee I bring ; 
Cover my defenceless head 

With the shadow of thy wing. 

Mb. Beeciter: Let us sing another hymn, which is not the less 
beautiful to our Protestant hearts because it was written by a Roman 
Catholic. The one that we have been singing expresses the most 
utter and absolute clinging and yearning dependence of the soul on 
Christ; and here is one that interprets that dependence — the 424th. 

Thou, O my Jesus, Thou didst me 

Upon the cross embrace ; 
For me didst bear the nails and spear, 

And manifold disgrace ; 

And griefs aad torments numberless. 

And sweat and agony. 
Yea, death itself : and all for one 

That was thine enemy. 

Then why, O blessed Jesus Christ, 

Should I not love thee well ? 
Not for the hope of winning heaven, 

Nor of escaping hell ; 

Not with the hope of gaining aught. 

Not seeking a reward ; 
But as Thyself hast loved me, 

O ever-loving Lord. 

E'en so I love thee, and will love, 

And in thy praise will sing; 
Solely because Thou art my God, 

And my eternal King. —Francis Xavier. 



IX. 

One with Christ. 



Thtjrsday Morning, Sept. IT, 1874. 

Lesson : John xv. 5-13. 

"I am the vine, ye are the branches. He that ahideth in me, 
and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit ; for without me ye 
can do nothing. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a 
branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into 
the fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my words 
abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto 
you." 

These immortal chapters, these love-words of Christ, in 
his last meeting with his disciples before his passion and 
crncifixion, cannot be interpreted from the outside toward 
the inside. They perish the moment you apply to them any- 
thing like material or physical figures or illustrations. Even 
the vine and the branches that he himself introduces are 
coherent, and live together by virtue of an interior life that 
is common to both of them — not by the bark, not by the 
wood, but by the sap and the vitality which are in them. 
We find the nearest parallel to that truth — and a very imper- 
fect one it is — in the relations which we sustain to one another 
in our innermost life, in our very best hours, where persons 
are brought together by elective affinities — by those influences 
which bring together households and relatives and lovers 
and friends. In hours when we are in the best health, and 
in the most cheerful and hopeful hours, when we have a 
sense of being the most perfectly at one with those who are 
near us, and of their being in responsive moods, so that we 
and they are in sympathy and unity — in those hours we ap- 
proach most nearly to this sense of the intersphering of souls. 

Now, the words ^ identity" and '* unity" are so stained 



208 ONE WITH CHBIST 

and saturated with material elements that eyerybody stumbles 
at this thought of oneness. How are we one with Christ ? 
How is Christ one with God ? These are questions that are 
frequently asked. And yet we have (I should be sorry for 
one who did not have) some hours in which we are intro- 
duced into the experience of soul-unity — not similarity, 
necessarily, certainly not identity ; yet such perfect respon- 
siveness that two souls, or even more, act as one ; and it is 
declared that if we abide in Christ, and his works abide in 
us, we may ask what we will, and it shall be done unto us. 

If you take a group of friends that thus intersphere with 
each other by their higher nature, there is no yearning 
greater than, ** What shall I do for these others ? How can 
I pour out more happiness, more thought, more feeling, 
more of my life, for them ? " It is not the centripetal outcry 
of selfishness, *^ Who shall show me any good?" It is the 
pouring of the soul out in words like these : *' How shall I 
bless those those whom I love ? How shall I make them 
happier? What shall I do for them?" One is half sufto- 
cated, sometimes, from the conscious weakness in himself — 
from his feeling of inability to do good and make persons 
happy and joyful. 

In such an hour as this, then, whatsoever you shall ask 
will be fulfilled ; and it is a blessed thing ; for nothing 
pleases love so much as to be solicited — to be asked to do 
sotnethiug. The grand trouble with love in this world is the 
want of power or opportunity for expression. 

*' Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit [that you 
become larger in that nature which you have in common with God, 
and that you show the traits of your Father more and more]; so shall 
ye be my disciples [my scholars]." 

Christ constantly represents himself as a teacher ; and 
those that are his are simply his scholars. 
"As my father loved me, so have I loved you." 

The great gulf that lies between us and Christ as a spirit- 
ual and transcendent Being is passed as quick as a flash of 
lightning. 

" Continue ye in my love. If ye keep my commandments, ye 
shall abide in my love [and it might be added : If ye love ye shall 
abide in my commandments] ; even as I have kept my Father's com- 



ONE WITH CHRIST. 209 

raandments, and abide in his love. These things have I spoken unto 
you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be 
full. This is my commandment : That ye love one another as I have 
loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down 
his life for his friends." 

So then, again, for tlie hundredth time, the new com- 
mandment comes out, as the center and the potential element 
of life. He who knows how to rise into that love of his 
higher nature has at his command all discretion, all intellect- 
ual perception, all taste, all relish, all sense of truth, all 
Justice, all discipline. Whatever is needful comes to love. 
It is not a mere vapid state of good nature and indifference, 
or of good will springing from indifference. Love is girded 
about with all strength, and carries in its hand both the 
sword and the wreath ; and it is able to slay that it may 
make aliye, and to give pain to men that it may raise them 
to higher joy. 

In that experience of love a man has complete possession 
of himself, and of every part of his nature ; and all the ele- 
ments of his being affiliate harmoniously in a way that they 
cannot in any other condition of soul. If we aim at that 
and live in it, then we abide in the love of Christ. 

"If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide in my love." 
*' This is my commandment, that ye love one another as I have loved 
you." 

You must practice love on each other in order to know 
how to love Christ. 



210 ONE WITH CHBIST. 



PRAYEE. 

Thou art ascended up on high, thou that art invisible ; yet not to 
separate thyself from us; for thou art the life of the universe; and 
whatever is, whatever has conscious being, and whatever rejoices, 
draws from thee the vitality by which it is, and by which it rejoices. 
We are never far from thee except in our thoughts. The distance is 
of our own makiug. It is but the difference between our feeling and 
thine that separates us from thee. We rejoice that thy government 
over all thy creatures is beneficent ; and whatever there is of wrath, 
of scowls, of storms, and of thunder, iu thy nature, is remedial. We 
rejoice that thou art watching over all thy creatures throughout the 
universe iu a spirit of paternal love, and that thou art willing to bear 
with them, yea, to bear in their place, to carry their sins and their 
sorrows, and that thou art desirous that they should be healed by the 
stripes that are put upon them here. We rejoice that thou art 
a painstaking and mother-loving God, and that out of thy wisdom, 
and patience, and goodness we have grown to the stature which we 
have attained. Nor are thy commandments hard. Thou dost com- 
mand, not according to thy greatness and power, but in accordance 
with our capacities and needs. Thou dost affiliate us one with 
another in all the things of life, giving us opportunity and help 
to deny the selfishness that is in us, and to resist and overcome pride, 
and to conform every passion and power to the great work of unity. 
We pray thee, that we may have more of the power of divine life in 
this way. Let us seek for thee, not by the understanding, but 
by the heart. May we follow after God by following the divine 
affections. And we pray that thus, all around about us, the day may 
shine brighter an(^ brighter. May our trust in thee be more implicit ; 
and may we know that we do not trust in the proportion that we are 
good, but in proportion as we need thee. 

Grant, we pray thee, for thine own sake, and for the sake of that 
which thou hast promised in thy word, that we may be perfected; 
that there may be in one and another the growing of the blos- 
som that shall at last break forth into the sweet and immortal 
fruit of that peace which does not depart — into that high experi- 
ence of blessedness with God which is not stopped by conscious imper- 
fection and conscious sin, but which beholds itself, as God beholds it 
in his infinite compassion and mercy. Grant that thus we may live 
in a fellowship that is above the world, and have that peace which 
the world cannot give us, and which the world, blessed be God, can- 
not take away from us. And so in strifes, and if need be in tears and 
in anguish, may we make good our warfare, and awake in thine 
image, to behold thee as thou art, and with overflowing joy unite 
in tne song of the universe, ascribing honor, and glory, and power, 
and majesty unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the 
Lamb, for ever. Amen. 



X. 

Spieitual CoisroEiT. 



HYMN. 

(PLTMOTJTH COIiliBCTION, No. 840.) 

Give to the winds thy fears ; 

Hope, and be undismay'd ; 
God hears thy sighs, and counts thy tears, 

God shall lift up thy head. 

Through waves, through clouds and storms, 

He gently clears the way ; 
Wait thou his time ; so shall this night 

Soon end in joyous day. 

Still heavy is thy heart ? 

Still sink thy spirits down ? 
Cast off the weight, let fear depart, 

Bid e\ ery care be gone. 

Far, far above thy thought 

His counsel shall appear, 
When fully he the work hath wrought 

That caused thy needless fear. 

What though thou rulest not! 

Yet heaven, and earth, and hell 
Proclaim, God sitteth on the throne, 

And ruleth all things well ! 



X. 

SPIEITUAL COISTCEIT. 



Friday Morning, Sept. 18, 1874. 
Lesson : Luke xv. 1-32. 

" Then drew near unto him all the Publicans and sinners for to 
hear him. And the Pharisees and Scribes murmured, saying, This 
man receiveth sinners, and eateth with them." 

With our manners and customs it would be considered as 
an impertinence for us to inquire at a hotel table, or restau- 
rant, or any public gathering, as to the moral character of 
any person there. So that they observe the ordinary rules 
of etiquette, to eat with people means very little, except 
that you simply eat with them; but there was in Christ's asso- 
ciation with these persons who were considered outcasts that 
which offended the conscience and the taste and the lelig- 
ious customs of his time, and brought him under a ban. It 
was not that he merely preached to wicked people, as any- 
body might be supposed to be at liberty to do, but there can 
be no question that he made himseK so manifestly a com- 
panion with these people, — that he exercised such a sym- 
pathy for them, that he so recognized their manhood, and so 
made them feel that, wonderful as he was, a person followed 
and looked up to, took a personal interest in each one of 
them, — that he offended the Jews. It was that personality 
among them, and that putting himself on a level with them, 
that was so agreeable to them on the one side, and so offen- 
sive to the Jews on the other ; and the pressure of reprehen- 
sion became so great that it gave rise to a train of instruction 
on that subject which is very remarkable. He spoke this 
parable : 

" What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of 
them dotli not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go 



214 SPIBITUAL CONCEIT. 

after that which is lost, until he find it ? And when he hath found it, 
he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, 
he calleth together his friends and neighbors, saying unto them, Re- 
joice with me ; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto 
you, that likewise joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repent- 
eth, more than over ninety and nine just persons, which need no 
repentance." 

The teacbing here is that a revelation of the divine nature 
has in itself a healing power, and that the restoration or 
elevation of men, or their growth toward perfection, is a 
thousand times more rejoiced in than the fact that any one 
of the imperfect has attained perfection, or anything like it. 

" Either what womari having ten pieces of silver, if she lose one 
piece, doth not light a candle, and sweep the house and seek dili- 
gently till she find it ? And when she hath found it, she calleth her 
friends and her neighbors together, saying. Rejoice with me; for I 
have found the piece which I had lost. Likewise, I say unto you, 
there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth." 

Thus far the Saviour illustrates the attitude of the divine 
mind toward those that have fallen below the morals of the 
age in which they live. 'Now he gives the memorable parable 
which contained in it a fatal stroke at the Pharisees : 

" A certain man had two sons : and the younger of them said to 
his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. 
And he divided unto them his living. And not many days after the 
younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far 
country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living. And 
when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land ; and 
he began to be in want. And he went and joined himself to a citizen 
of that country ; and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 

" And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the 
swine did eat, and no man gave unto him. And when he came to 
himself, he said. How many hired servants of my father's have bread 
enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go 
to my father, and will say unto him. Father, I have sinned against 
heaven, and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy 
son : make me as one of thy hired servants. And he arose, and came 
to his father. 

" But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and 
had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. And 
the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in 
thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son. But the 
father said to his servants. Bring forth the best robe, and put it on 
him ; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet ; and bring 
hither the fatted calf, and kill it ; and let us eat, and be merry : For 



SPIRITUAL CONCEIT. 215 

this my son was dead, and is alive again ; he was lost, and is found. 
And they began to be merry." 

Tims far, like the other two parables, this is a recognition 
of the divine feeling and attitude toward those who have 
gone wrong, but who are trying to reinstate themselves and 
to go right again. 

Now he turns to the Pharisees : 

" His elder son was in the field ; and as he came and drew nigh to 
the house, he heard music and dancing. And he called one of the 
servants, and asked what these things meant. And he said unto him, 
Thy brother is come ; and thy father hatii killed the fatted calf, be- 
cause he hath received him safe and sound. And he was angry, and 
would not go in : therefore came his father out, and entreated him. 
And he answering said to his father, Lo, these many years do I serve 
thee, neither transgressed I at any time thy commandment : and yet 
thou never gavest me a kid, that I might make merry with my 
friends. But as soon as this thy son was come, which hath devoured 
thy living with harlots, thou hast killed for him the fatted calf. And 
he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is 
thine, it was meet that we should make merry, and be glad : For this 
thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost and is found." 

Usually in reading the j)arable of the Prodigal Son, the 
whole force is supposed to consist simply in the fall of the 
young man and in the paternal love which received him 
back again ; but that is not the haK. It is not even the 
point of the parable. Here are contrasted, with wonderful 
power, two styles of livelihood — one, that of the moralist, 
who had observed every external command, and who was 
scrupulous in his morality, but in whom the natural affec- 
tions were absolutely extinguished. He kept all the days and 
observed all the services that were prescribed ; and he had 
grown perfect in his obedience to the external law ; but he 
was stony in his better feelings. It was moral consciousness, 
it was rightness of outward conduct, that made him believe 
that he was so good, and so high above the level of common 
men, that he was justified in neglecting them, and even in 
feeling repulsion from them. This character is drawn in 
direct contrast with that of the dissolute young man ; and I 
will defy any one to read the narrative in a calm mind, and 
not have sympathy with the dissipated brother as against the 
Pharisaic older brother. At the same time, no one ever feels 
that in the young man's wild and dissipated life there is any 
excuse or palliation ; everybody feels that he was gross and 



216 SPIRITUAL CONCEIT. 

wicked ; everybody is repelled from his career ; and yet there 
was heart left in him, and penitence, and ont of all his 
wickedness and misery there arose in him a yearning for ele- 
vation. So he went back to his father with repentance and 
without excuse, and onr hearts go with him. On the other 
hand, contrast with him the hard, cold, severe, stern re- 
ligionist who thought so much of God and his service that 
he could tread under foot his younger brother, and who on 
his restoration felt not one single throb of gladness. You 
cannot help feeling repelled from such a man with indigna- 
tion ; and this parable is an epitome of one of the most awful 
teachings of the Saviour, where he checks the dispositions 
that go with the passions, and with all selfishness, through 
the higher moral sentiments and the educated reason, and 
substantially says, ^^The dissipation of the passions is worse 
than you think it to be, but the perversion of the higher 
faculties is worse than that." To be perfectly moral, to be 
scrupulous in the observance of every decency of society, and 
to lose all sympathy for men, and all care for the weak and 
poor and imperfect in taking care of yourself — this is more 
horrible to God than if you were a drunkard and a libertine. 
The dissipation of the top of the head is guiltier than the 
dissipation of the bottom. Therefore Christ looked around 
upon the multitude, and said to the proudest teachers and 
the best men of those days, *^ The publicans and the harlots 
shall enter the kingdom of heaven before you." 

That is the very style into which civilization , or what is 
called culture, is carrying thousands of people. It is tending 
to separate them from their kind, and to make them believe 
that nobody is worthy of their notice who is not cultivated. 
If common people get a living by hard work, or if by reason 
of neglect or a strong endowment of passion they have gone 
wrong, good men are supercilious and contemptuous toward 
them. They do not feel bound to have any care or thought 
for the average man. Only the select, the refined, and the 
cultivated will they live with in reciprocity of politeness, 
being thoroughly selfish ; and the Saviour says that that 
spirit is more damnable than drunkenness. It is a very dan- 
gerous thing to pervert the best faculties of a man's nature. 



SPIRITUAL CONCEIT. 217 



PRAYER. 

We thank thee, our Father, for the light which shines above all. 
We thank thee for the influence which pervades the universe — for we 
believe thy heart is felt everywhere ; and whatever there is of aspi- 
ration, and yearning for higher and better things ; whatever there is 
of sympathy and affection and kindness outreaching everywhere 
that there is sentient life, is of thee. As nothing grows without the 
light and warmth of the sun, and all things spring forth and grow in 
them ; so thou, Sun of Righteousness, arising with healing in thy 
beams, hast produced life everywhere that corresponds to thine. 
Thou that through cycles and ages dost draw up toward thee the 
great race which thou hast created, art everywhere the Center, the 
Life, and the Light. We pray not alone that we may feel thy power 
as an influence of nature ; but that in nature may we feel all things 
as influences from God. 

Bless to us, we pray thee, the teaching of thy Son, our Saviour, 
and his example. May we walk purely as he did. May we walk in 
the same sympathy and benevolent labor for men that he did. May 
we be as unboastful as he was. May our condescension be without 
pride. May our kindness be without ostentation. May we study the 
simplicity which belongs to true life, and seek to irradiate others by 
shining our sweetened affections and heart-life upon them. Help us 
to-day to live in our better thoughts and feelings, of trust and faith 
and hope and love, in cheerfulness; and whatever may be the storm, 
may we look above it, where thou art, in thy power, in thy glory, 
and where are so many whom we have loved, whom we have sent 
before us, and who call out to us through the void space, " Come, 
come," everlastingly, filling the air, sanctifying the memory, warm- 
ing our hearts, quickening our weak and wasting confidence, and 
making the future needful to us, without which we faint, as they 
that are in the wilderness without a fountain. 

So may we live above the present and visible, and in that great 
unseen, where are so many whose hearts beat no more on earth, and 
where we are needed and waited for. 

And grant, at last, when through faith and patience we have come 
to the end, that there may be outpouring from the celestial city a 
great multitude who have waited for us, to receive us, in the midst 
of song and exultation, into the kingdom of our Father. 

And to his name shall be the praise, forever and ever. Amen. 



XI. 

Christ, the Phtsioiai^. 



HYMN. 

(PLTMOTTTH COIiliECTION, NO. 898.) 

Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee ! 
E'en though it be a cross 

That raiseth me; 
Still all my song shall be, — 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to Thee ! 

Though, like the wanderer. 

The sun gone down. 
Darkness be over me, 

My rest a stone; 
Yet in my dreams I'd be 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, — 

Nearer to Thee ! 

Then let the way appear, 

Steps unto heaven ; 
All that Thou sendest me, 

In mercy given ; 
Angels to beckon me 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, — 

Nearer to Thee ! 

Then with my waking thoughts 
Bright with Thy praise. 

Out of my stony griefs 
Bethel I'll raise ; 

So by my woes to be 

Nearer, my God, to Thee, — 
Nearer to Thee ! 

Or, if on joyful wing. 

Cleaving the sky, 
Sun, moon, and stars forgot. 

Upward I fly. 
Still all my song shall be,— 
Nearer, my God, to Thee, 

Nearer to thee ! 



XI. 

Christ, the Physician. 



Saturday Morning, Sept. 19, 1874. 
Lesson : Luke xix. 

" Jesus entered and passed through Jericho. And behold, there 
was a man named Zaccheus, which was the chief among the pubh- 
cans, and he was rich." 

There Yv^ere two circumstances that made him rather hate- 
ful to the Jews. The publicans were taxgatherers under the 
Eoman gove];nmenfc. The taxes of the province were farmed 
out. The tetrarch was obliged to account with the Eoman 
government for such a sum ; and then, in order to reimburse 
himself, he sold out his tetrarchy in divisions to sub-con- 
tractors, and they extorted the sums levied from the people. 

Now, he that gathers taxes violently is hateful, and always 
must needs be, even if he represent the home government ; 
but this was foreign taxation ; and there was a religious as 
well as a personal and national indignation, and there was a 
perpetual and bloody hatred against the Eomans ; and Zac- 
cheus was the *' chief " — that is, he was a superintendent. 
He had, we would say, a district, with subordinate taxgath- 
erers under him ; and he was rich — which was a very bad 
sign ! In the war, wben commissaries came out of the army 
rich it was regarded as presumptive evidence against them ; 
when men go into office on a small salary and come out; rich 
it invariably gives rise to some unfavorable thoughts and 
comments concerning them ; and here was Zaccheus, a tax- 
gatherer, and he was rich ! 

"He sought to see Jesus, who he was; and he could not for the 
press, because he was little of stature." 

He had heard a great deal about Jesus, and he had a nat- 
ural curiosity to look upon bim ; we can see him standing 
on tiptoe, and trying to look between people's heads. 

" He ran before, and climbed up into a sycamore-tree to see him ; 



322 CHRIST, THE PHYSICIAN. 

for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place he 
looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zaccheus, make haste 
and come down ; for to-day I must abide at thy house." 

A more surprising address, probably, to a man that had 

not thought of anything but curiosity, was never made. 

"He made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully. 
And when they [that is, the great retinue of Pharisees that hovered 
around] saw it, they all murmured, saying. That he was gone to be 
guest with a man that is a sinner." 

'^ If h.e has sinned, cut him off," was the feeling ; ^' we 
have not sinned ; we have kept the law ; and if he has 
sinned, why that is his lookout : justice must be done." 

" Zaccheus stood and said unto the Lord [evidently having heard 
these murmurs, and being put upon his defense], Behold, Lord, the 
half of my goods I give to the poor ; and if I have taken anything 
from any man by false accusation, I restore him four fold." 

He revealed the essential equity of his life. He opened 
his heart in order to show that his emotions, all the tenden- 
cies of his inward life, were elevated, moral, religious. 

"And Jesus said unto him. This day is salvation come to this 
house, forasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of 
man is come to seek and to save that which was lost." 

This is repeated so often, and is construed in such a nar- 
row and technical way, that we fail to see that it is the very 
genius of the kingdom of heaven ; that the nature of God 
is curative and not ptinitive; that " divine Justice " means that 
administration which restores strength to weakness, and 
goodness to evil, and health to all forms of disease that run 
towards death. 

You will take notice, also, that these metaphysical and 
technical matters which usually are introduced with us were 
utterly dispensed with. Zaccheus was not told that he must 
repent, and have his heart changed, and then have faith in 
the Lord Jesus Christ, as if there were these concatenated 
circumstances to be looked after technically. The moment 
the Saviour looked upon him and saw ^ the current of his 
life was upward and toward God and men in the spirit of 
love, and that his soul was moving in the direction of the 
great central element of the universe, that was enough, and 
he pronounced salvation on his house. 



CHBISTy THE PHYSICIAN, 323 



PRAYEK. 

" Our Father, we thank thee that thou hast caused the light of 
the morning to shine again. Thou art rolling away the clouds. 
Behind them we behold thy fair smiling face. The storms are pass- 
ing. We rejoice that above all storms is that Hand which guides 
them, even in the darkest hours, and causes them to nourish the 
earth. In the midst of the utmost tribulations thou ridest in the 
clouds. Clouds and darkness are around about thy throne, but just- 
ice and mercy are the habitations thereof. We rise above the 
defenses of men, above their assaults, above all human wisdom, into 
the confidence of God, who is all-wise, and ineffably kind, fulfilling 
mercies in overmeasure, and doing exceeding abundantly more than 
we ask or think. How feeble are we in our best estate ! How unable 
are we to look through the tangled affairs of life to discern the good 
from the evil, and to lay our plans for the future ! Though thou dost 
employ our wisdom and experience, how fragile are we! how unqual- 
ified to stand pressure! But how canst thou bring everything that 
is wrong to naught ! Yet thou thyself art the same yesterday, to-day 
and for ever. Thou turnest men to destruction, and sayest, Return, 
ye children of men ; but thou changest not. Thou art immutable, 
and thy nature is benefaction. We therefore desire, not to hide our- 
selves beneath our own selves, but to rise evermore into the thought 
of God, and join ourselves to the great multitude of thy government. 
Thou art the universal Father of those that seek good, and that are 
following after thee in thy spirit. 

Forgive our pride ; forgive our selfishness ; forgive all sordidness, 
all clinging to vain and worldly things, and all malign experiences, 
and cleanse our hearts even by thy chastisements. As thou dost 
cleanse the earth and the air by thy storms, so, if it be needful, send 
darkness, and the voice of thunder, and the cleansing of whirlwinds, 
in order that there may be between our souls and thee no obstruc- 
tion, no poisonous vapors, but only the clear light of love, and faith, 
and hope ; and may these abide when all knowledge passes, when all 
experience is done away, when all philosophy reveals its shallowness 
and its earth-born nature. Then, when death hath changed us and 
set us free from these bodies, we shall rise into the unknown and 
eternal home, and find abiding faith, and hope, and love, and stand 
surrounded by those who are filled with these divine elements, being 
like them, rejoicing with them, and surrounding thee ineffably 
blessed, to go out no more for ever. 

These mercies we ask through Jesus Christ our Redeemer. Amen. 



XII 



Mait-Lovestg, 
The Road to GoD-LovrN"a 



HYMN. 

(Pltmotjth Collection, No. 776.) 



Our pathway oft is wet with tears, 

Our sky with clouds o'ercast. 
And worldly cares and worldly f ears 

Go with us to the last ; 
Not to the last ! God's word hath said, 

Could we but read aright : 
O pilgrim ! lift in hope thy head, 

At eve it shall he light ! 

Though earth-bom shadows now may shroud 

Our toilsome path awhile, 
God's blessed word can part each cloud, 

And bid the sunshine smile. 
If we but trust in living faith, 

His love and power divine, 
Then, though our sun may set in death, 

His light shall round us shine. 

When tempest clouds are dark on high. 

His bow of love and praise 
Shines beauteous in the vaulted sky, 

Token that storms shall cease. 
Then keep we on with hope unchiU'd, 

By faith and not by sight, 
And we shall own his word fulflll'd— 

At eve there shall be light! 



XII. 
MAN-LOVma, THE EOAD TO GOD LOVING. 



Monday Morning, Sept. 31, 1874. 
Lesson : John xiii. 1-17. 

"Now, before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that 
his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the 
Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved 
them unto the end. And supper being ended, the devil having now 
put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, 
Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, 
and that he was come from God, and went to Grod [standing in the 
consciousness of his grandeur and divinity, in regard to his ulterior 
nature, his full self, knowing that all things had been put into his 
hands, that he was come from God, and that he went to 'God— in that 
state of mind] he riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments, 
and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water 
into a basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them 
with the towel wherewith he was girded." 

It would seem as though the first disciples that he went 
to, very patiently and ignorantly let him do as he had a mind 
to ; but, 

"Then cometh he to Simon Peter; and Peter saith unto him. 
Lord, dost thou wash my feet ? Jesus answered and said unto him, 
What I do thou knowest not now ; but thou shalt know hereafter. 
Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus an- 
swered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me." 

Then, taking it very literally, and feeling that if he was 
to have a part, he would like to have a pretty full one, Peter 
said, 

" Lord, not my feet only, but my hands and my head." 
He looked upon it entirely from the outside. 

"Jesus saith unto him, He that is washed needeth not save to 
wash his feet, but is clean every whit; and ye are clean, but not all." 

The Saviour was here speaking in an enigmatical way, as 
he was very apt to do. 



228 MAN-LOVING, THE BOAD TO GOD-LOVING. 

" For he knew who should betray him ; therefore said he, Ye are 
not all clean. So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his 
garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, " Know ye 
what I have done unto you ? Ye call me Master and Lord ; and ye 
say well, for so I am. If I, then, your Lord and Master, have washed 
your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have 
given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. 
Verily, verily, I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his 
lord ; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye 
know these things, happy are ye if ye do them." 

We ought to bear in mind that this is a part of the very 
same general history which is celebrated in the Lord's Sup- 
per ; it belongs to that institution ; and I do not know any 
reason that makes it obligatory and a duty to. celebrate the 
Lord's Supper which does not make it obligatory and a duty 
to celebrate also the washing of the disciples' feet. If I 
thought that we were bound by an absolute command to cele- 
brate the Lord's Supper, and that the external form of it 
was obligatory, I should feel bound also to practice at the 
same time and always the washing of the feet, as the Chris- 
tian sect that call themselves 8andemanians do ; but both of 
them are mere external forms, and their celebration consists 
of the carrying out of the principle which the one and the 
other indicate. The second part of the law is, '^Love thy 
neighbor as thyself ;" and the first part is, *^Thou shalt love 
the Lord thy G-od with all thy heart." That symbolical 
action of Christ, the breaking of the bread, signified the 
breaking of his body, thus revealing Grod to them as a great 
sacrifice — that is, revealing the fact that Grod gives his time, 
his thought, his feeling, his love, for men, in rearing them 
to honor and glory, in that we are lifted up in our affection 
and reverence toward Cod ; and in the other service — that of 
the washing of the feet — we are taught how to humble our- 
selves to the lowest offices of kindness ; how to make our- 
selves less than the least, if in so doing we can help them ; 
and I think it is a great deal harder to practice this injunc- 
tion than the other. It is very easy for men to reverence 
G-od, but it is not so easy for them to recognize their neigh- 
bor, and to love him as themselves, and to fulfill all the duties 
which love implies, undergoing self-sacrifice, and doing 
things that are abasing and are repugnant to our natural 



MAN-LOVING, THE ROAD TO GOD-LOVING. 229 

pride and to our feelings. That, however, is the disclosure 
of the law of God. John asks, If we hate our brother, whom 
we have seen, how can we love God whom we have not seen ? 
The way to right experience toward God lies through the full 
disclosure of love-service toward our fellow-men. It is not a 
substitute for the love of God ; it is the avenue through 
which we come to the higher life; and in proportion as we 
practice toward our fellow-men aU gentleness and sweetness 
and helpfulness, and sacrifice ourselves for their sakes, in 
that proportion we shall know how God first sacrificed him- 
self for us, and how he is at once a Legislator and Judge 
and a Father, and how all these can move together in the 
great sphere of divine love. 



230 MAN-LOVING, THE ROAB TO QOD-LOVING, 



PRAYEK. 

Vouchsafe, our Father, thy Messing to rest upon us. Thou hast 
blessed, us, and made this place memorable. We thank thee that we 
have so many of us been drawn together in the better relations which 
include the hope and faith of the life that is to come. We thank 
thee for all the hours of enjoyment which we have had together, and 
for the enriching of our affections one in the other. We thank thee 
that we have been strengthened in faith and in hope, and that joy 
itself has been wings to faith. 

Now we are to disperse, having met for the last time, so many of 
us, together in this place. We pray that we may do it without sad- 
ness ; that we may do it with thankfulness for that which is past, and 
with hope for that which is to come. May we never forget that we 
are called, not to darkness, but to light ; that we are children of the 
day; and that our faces should shine as those upon whom God is 
shining. 

We pray that we may go forth to meet the duties of life, to as- 
sume its burdens and responsibilities with more trust in thee ; with no 
trust in our own strength, which is so poor and so failing. May our 
hearts be stayed upon Grod. 

Fulfill to every one of us, we beseech of thee, the promises which 
thou hast made. Be a defense to those that are assaulted. Open a 
door to those who are pursued, that they may run in and be safe. 
Hide them in thy pavilion until the storm be overpast. We pray 
that thou wilt give grace to those who are violently tempted, that 
they may be able to resist temptation, and come off with victory. 
We pray that thou wilt raise up all who are cast down and that are 
desponding. Wilt thou give strength to every one that is to assume 
burdens and carry sorrows. We beseech of thee that to those whose 
life is outward divine grace may be ministered in all fidelity ; and 
that in all rectitude they may walk before men. We pray that those 
whose lives are hidden, and whose sorrows are unspoken, may have 
the witness of the spirit of God dwelling evermore in them. May 
those who seem to themselves to be treading their last steps on the 
shadowy side of life rejoice that the day is not far distant when they 
shall enter upon their nobler rest and life. We pray that those 
whose life is apparently before them may be girded with strength, 
and grow more and more in truth and honor and fidelity toward 
men. 

Bless, we pray thee, the church universal. May thy disciples of 
every name study the things in which they agree one with another. 
May divisions, and oppositions, and prejudices, and hatings pass 
away; and may the common love of Jesus bind them together in 
love, that they may work together. And now that the enemy is 
coming in like a flood, we pray that all thy people may feel for each 
other's hands, and stand banded together immovable and firm for 
rectitude. We pray that thus the power of the Holy Ghost may 



MAN-LOVINa, THE BOAD TO GOD-LOVING. 231 

overshadow all churches, and that the glory of the Lord may fill this 
land, even as the waters fill the sea. 

We commend ourselves to thy fatherly care. May we carry away 
a song. May we rejoice in the Lord, and again may we rejoice. And 
so, singing and rejoicing in the midst of infirmities and trials, may we 
follow in the footsteps of those worthies who now are crowned in 
heaven; and may we he received with infinite greetings and re- 
joicings, and have an exceeding abundant entrance administered to 
us in the kingdom of our Father. 

We ask it in the adorable name of Jesus, to whom, with the 
Father and the Spirit, shall he praises everlasting. Amen, 



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